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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Eugène Ciceri (1813-1890) : Peindre, lithographier et enseigner le paysage au XIXe siècle

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description

The primary aim of the thesis is to expose the artist’s main biographical lines, which will appear as partly linked to his family background, involving him in the artistic world very early and influencing his life course, on a private but mostly on a professional level, and this throughout a long period covering three quarters of the 19th century.In the first part of the thesis the work of Eugène Ciceri as a painter will be explored - a work over which a certain amount of confusion has remained until now - in order to detect its main strengths and show how the artist develops his own grammar of landscaping. At first described as dense and diversified, his lithographic production will then be carefully studied, highlighting the fields that the artist covered and the links that exist with his painted work. This enables witnessing the extent of the artist’s influence on the perception of places he represents and on the processes of image making in a world where photography is being invented. This also leads to analyzing the complex relationships growing between publishers and artists at a time when the latter are becoming the main wheels of an image-producing machine. The role that these productions can play towards topical events of the time in a world where the emergence of leisure and industrial development are combined will be brought to light. In this wide context, the educational role of the artist and the images he creates can have various meanings. In the end, it will be attempted to show how Eugène Ciceri, who within a century and a half has gone from great notoriety to practically total oblivion, can prove to be simultaneously a mirror, a witness and an actor of his time.This whole document presents several appendices, including a general catalog which testifies of the work of Eugène Ciceri in the most comprehensive way, displaying paintings as well as engravings, and whose elaboration has played a significant part in this study.