Charles Théodore Frère Paintings  *  All of French Paintings

Biography of Charles Théodore Frère

Keyword:
Frere Charles Théodore, reproduction, Frere Charles Théodore biography, masterpiece, Frere Charles Théodore painting reproductions

Charles-Théodore Frère, referred to familiarly as Théodore, was born in Paris on June 24, 1814. He was the older brother of Pierre-Édouard Frère, an established genre painter who had studied under Paul Delaroche. The fraternity of the two brother-artists, both attaining such a high level of prestige, was unique in that they treated extremely different themes. Charles-Théodore Frère began studying under Jean Léon Cogniet and Camille Roqueplan. Shortly after beginning his studies, Charles Théodore Frère left Paris and traveled through the countryside of Normandy, Alsace, and Auvergne finding some inspiration in nature.

After returning to Paris, Frère used what Charles-Théodore Frère had seen in painting his first composition accepted at the Salon of 1834: Vue des Environs de Strasbourg (View of the Environs of Strasbourg), a city located in the Alsace region of France. Alongside this work Charles Théodore Frère also showed a landscape painting based on views of the Brie-Comte-Robert area. His earliest compositions, those exhibited until the Salon of 1836, concentrated on scenes that were available and familiar to him, and also well-known to Salon audiences. But Charles-Théodore Frère was interested in more than depictions of his home country, and between 1836 and 1838 – several accounts differ – Frère departed on his first journey to Algeria. Visions of the Algerian landscape and people would be present in nearly every one of the works Charles Théodore Frère exhibited at the Salon until 1850. Clarence Cook, in his book Art and Artists of Our Time (1888), notes that:

Frère does not tell us just what moved him, it is like enough that Charles-Théodore Frère was attracted by some pictures of Oriental scenery in the Salon that contained his picture; but, however that may have been, Charles Théodore Frère says only that he was strongly drawn by the sun, and that in the search for it Charles Théodore Frère went to Algeria.

After the conquest of Algeria by Charles X in 1830, Algeria gained national attention, not only for its French military training base and warm climate, but also for its intriguing culture. Artists and writers began to flock to this new haven, establishing a presence in Algeria that would last until 1962 when the French government proclaimed Algerian independence. However, during Frère’s time, Algeria was just beginning to be more fully explored and the government began encouraging artists to travel to the French colony by offering traveling scholarships, different from the Prix de Rome, allowing them to experiment with painting in the near East. C.H. Stranahan’s (A History of French Painting from Its Earliest to Its Latest Practice, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888, pg. 228) describes the appeal of the Orient during this period in France:

The painter’s Orient, thus discovered by Decamps, seemed a field congenial to the French mind, and the French school has furnished many artists delighting and excelling in depicting the gorgeous scenes of the East, where the transparent atmosphere reveals the full radiance of the heaven and brings it seemingly nearer earth, and the Eastern civilization, or semi-civilization, that with its suggestions of romantic emotion, its gentle indolence, its incitements to the imagination-of all of which the blind, devoted faith of the Muscleman is an element-appeals so strongly to the poetic spirit. Many, like Delacroix and Vernet, besides those belonging to the class of Orientalists, have been fascinated by its charms. But Marilhat, Fromentin, Benjamin-Constant, Théodore Frère, Ziem, Belly… are conspicuous as being entranced by the Orient, as the moth by the flame-not, however, to the singeing of their artistic wings.

Frère began contributing to the movement known as Orientalism, the depiction of cultures from the near and far East, highlighting their cultural practices, daily life, architectural, and brilliant sunlight with an uninhibited sense of veracity, or what may be termed as “ethnography”. Charles Théodore Frère became intrigued by these cultures and after his journey to Algeria, which lasted roughly from 1836 or 1837 to 1839, Charles-Théodore Frère returned to Paris but later traveled through Egypt, Greece, Turkey, and Syria, presumably beginning sometime around 1851 through 1854. Charles Théodore Frère spent several years in Egypt especially, traveling down the Nile numerous times, and eventually establishing his own studio in Cairo. From 1855 Charles Théodore Frère began to exhibit only Oriental themes at the Salon, including landscapes, cityscapes, and interiors, continuing to do so for the next three decades.