"Bringing the Museum to You"

The Cyber Art Show continues our study of Impressionist landscape painters in the Public Domain with a 16-piece Exhibition of works by French artist Jean Baptiste Antoine Guillemet (1841-1918). Born in Chantilly, Guillemet came from a wealthy family of ship-owners and ship-chandlers based in Rouen, and his boyhood wish was to become a sailor. His parents opposed this, favoring law studies, but Guillemet took up painting full-time in Paris.

After meeting Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot through the Morisot sisters in 1861, he became a lifelong friend and admirer of the artist. He also formed a lifelong friendship with Édouard Manet, after taking sketching trips with Charles-Francois Daubigny and his son, Karl Pierre during the early 1860s. Manet immortalized Guillemet in his painting The Balcony (1869; Paris, Mus. d'Orsay). Guillemet also studied at the Academie Suisse, where he met Camille Pissarro, Gustave Courbet and Paul Cezanne. It was through Cezanne that Guillemet met and befriended the famous French author Emile Zola, whom he corresponded with on a regular basis.

 

Guillemet’s works were displayed regularly in the Salon exhibitions from the 1880s to 1900. He was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1880, an officer in 1896, and a commander in 1910.