Home Online catalogues True to Nature. Open-air Painting 1780-1870 7. Edme-Adolphe Fontaine Noisy-le-Grand 1814 – 1883 Versailles Isidore Dagnan at his Easel in the Open Air Edme-Adolphe Fontaine was a pupil of Léon Cogniet (1794–1880), and worked with him on the decorative scheme for the Madeleine Church in Paris. He later became professor of drawing at the military academy of Saint-Cyr, and specialised in portraits and history painting, often of military subjects. This small picture shows the landscapist Isidore Dagnan (1794–1873) before his easel. He is elegantly dressed, wearing a frock-coat and a sophisticated white summer hat – an outfit not particularly appropriate for painting in the open air. While the treatment of the background is very sketchy, the model’s features were rendered with great care, and were prepared with a pencil drawing of the artist’s head, also in the collection of the Fondation Custodia.1 Inscribed Dagnan paysagiste, the portrait is more of an homage to a fellow artist and friend than a spontaneous sketch of a plein air painter at work in a wooded landscape. 1Edme-Adolphe Fontaine, Studies for the Portrait of Isidore Dagnan at His Easel, 1819, graphite, heightened with white gouache on light brown wove paper, 211 × 139 mm, Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris, inv. no. 2014-T.12.
Edme-Adolphe Fontaine was a pupil of Léon Cogniet (1794–1880), and worked with him on the decorative scheme for the Madeleine Church in Paris. He later became professor of drawing at the military academy of Saint-Cyr, and specialised in portraits and history painting, often of military subjects. This small picture shows the landscapist Isidore Dagnan (1794–1873) before his easel. He is elegantly dressed, wearing a frock-coat and a sophisticated white summer hat – an outfit not particularly appropriate for painting in the open air. While the treatment of the background is very sketchy, the model’s features were rendered with great care, and were prepared with a pencil drawing of the artist’s head, also in the collection of the Fondation Custodia.1 Inscribed Dagnan paysagiste, the portrait is more of an homage to a fellow artist and friend than a spontaneous sketch of a plein air painter at work in a wooded landscape. 1Edme-Adolphe Fontaine, Studies for the Portrait of Isidore Dagnan at His Easel, 1819, graphite, heightened with white gouache on light brown wove paper, 211 × 139 mm, Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris, inv. no. 2014-T.12.