France, (1844-1925)
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Interior of a Butcher Shop
- (c. 1880-1890), etching
- 8 X 7.8 in. (20.3 x 19.8 cm.)
- Private Collection
-
Au village
- [from the book, Le Paysagiste aux champs. Paris: A. Lèvy, 1876.]
- (c 1870s), etching on paper
- 4.4 x 5.5 in. (11 x 14 cm.)
- Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
-
Celui qui fait les frais de la fête
- [The one who paid the price of the festival]
- (1894), etching
- 10.6 x 15.2 in. (26.9 x 38.4 cm.)
- Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée
About the Artist
Leon Augustin Lhermitte, French, (1844-1925), was a leading member of the school of Social Realism, Lhermitte painted almost exclusively, scenes taken from rural life. This gave him much commercial success as the urban French population of the time viewed the rural country as a land of seemingly unchanging people of the earth, romantically caught in the past.
Lhermitte worked in oil, pastels, charcoal and etchings. He adopted early on the method of peinture claire similar to that of the Impressionists, but remained more traditionally academic, always remaining true to his personal style of creating beautiful, light-filled pictures in the Barbizon tradition.
In the early twentieth century Leon Lhermitte’s son, Charles Lhermitte (1881-1945), worked in photography with a similar eye towards realism.[DES-4/07]