Home Online catalogues True to Nature. Open-air Painting 1780-1870 9. André Giroux Paris 1801 – 1879 Paris Forest Interior with a Painter, Civita Castellana, 1825-1830 André Giroux was an early practitioner of landscape photography as well as a painter. He initially trained with his father, who had studied under David and owned a successful business selling artist supplies. After attending the École des Beaux-Arts, Giroux won the Prix de Rome for paysage historique in 1825, and spent the following five years in Rome. Among his friends in the large circle of expatriate French artists in the city was Corot, who many have speculated could be the painter at work in this view near Civita Castellana in the Roman Campagna. Sheltered by exuberant vegetation, he seems absorbed in his work while his dog looks back at the viewer. One can imagine Giroux’s study of a waterfall (cat. 10) being the result of the efforts of the artist he depicted in the forest, though an inscription on the back of the paper tells us it was painted some 50 km away near the village of Papigno. Both sketches are rendered with a freshness and fluidity of touch that betray the rapidity of their execution, and great mastery in the depiction of light and its transient effects.
André Giroux was an early practitioner of landscape photography as well as a painter. He initially trained with his father, who had studied under David and owned a successful business selling artist supplies. After attending the École des Beaux-Arts, Giroux won the Prix de Rome for paysage historique in 1825, and spent the following five years in Rome. Among his friends in the large circle of expatriate French artists in the city was Corot, who many have speculated could be the painter at work in this view near Civita Castellana in the Roman Campagna. Sheltered by exuberant vegetation, he seems absorbed in his work while his dog looks back at the viewer. One can imagine Giroux’s study of a waterfall (cat. 10) being the result of the efforts of the artist he depicted in the forest, though an inscription on the back of the paper tells us it was painted some 50 km away near the village of Papigno. Both sketches are rendered with a freshness and fluidity of touch that betray the rapidity of their execution, and great mastery in the depiction of light and its transient effects.