Home Online catalogues True to Nature. Open-air Painting 1780-1870 40. Jean-Baptiste Adolphe Gibert Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe 1803 – 1883 Nice Interior of a Cave Born in Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe, Gibert moved to Paris in 1821 to study with Guillon-Lethière (1760–1832), a fellow artist from the Antilles, and entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1825. He won the Prix de Rome for historical landscape in 1829, arriving at the Villa Medici in January 1830. This sketch was painted during his three years studying in Italy, during which time he travelled to Naples and Sicily. It belonged to a cache of his oil sketches on paper that surfaced in 2001, having been held by his descendants, and included numerous images of gorges and grottoes. The strong vertical element just off-centre creates an unusual composition and splits the scene in two. To the left, the transitions between light and dark in the recesses of the cave produces an almost abstract patchwork of ochres and browns. Daylight comes in through the mouth of the cave on the right side of the picture, bouncing off the rocky interior. The inclusion of a barefoot shepherd asleep on the cave floor and a fire roaring in a stove suggests the human function of caves as natural shelters.
Born in Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe, Gibert moved to Paris in 1821 to study with Guillon-Lethière (1760–1832), a fellow artist from the Antilles, and entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1825. He won the Prix de Rome for historical landscape in 1829, arriving at the Villa Medici in January 1830. This sketch was painted during his three years studying in Italy, during which time he travelled to Naples and Sicily. It belonged to a cache of his oil sketches on paper that surfaced in 2001, having been held by his descendants, and included numerous images of gorges and grottoes. The strong vertical element just off-centre creates an unusual composition and splits the scene in two. To the left, the transitions between light and dark in the recesses of the cave produces an almost abstract patchwork of ochres and browns. Daylight comes in through the mouth of the cave on the right side of the picture, bouncing off the rocky interior. The inclusion of a barefoot shepherd asleep on the cave floor and a fire roaring in a stove suggests the human function of caves as natural shelters.