ÉMILE MUNIER PAINTINGS FOR SALE & BIOGRAPHY
ÉMILE MUNIER
French, 1840-1895
BIOGRAPHY
Émile Munier was born in Paris on June 2, 1840. His father, Pierre François Munier, was a weaver at the Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins and the young Émile trained there as a draughtsman with Abel Lucas. In 1861 Munier married Lucas’s daughter Henriette and in 1871 he left the Gobelins to pursue a full-time career as a painter. Munier trained at the École des Beaux-Arts during the 1860s and was awarded three medals there. He began exhibiting regularly at the Paris Salon in 1869. Munier studied with, and became a close friend of, William Adolphe Bouguereau, whose influence on the younger artist’s work was profound. Munier also established a long lasting collaboration with the glass designer Émile Gallé around 1879. And before his life was cut short, Munier exhibited to great acclaim at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.
In 1873, Munier met the American art agent George A. Lucas, who advised an array of important American collectors and dealers. Thus many of Munier’s works found their way into prominent American collections. One of the artist’s most famous patrons was Chapman H. Hyams, whose important collection of French art is now in the New Orleans Museum of Art. From 1876, Munier and his family spent their summers in Normandy and there he produced many informal drawings and watercolors of local fishermen and fishing boats, in contrast to his very finished academic exhibited works.
Munier is perhaps best known for his depictions of children and their favorite animals - during the 1880s his children Henri and Mari Louise served as his principal subjects. He also painted multiple depictions of cherubs, cupids, mythological and religious subjects. Munier’s Trois Amis, depicting a reclining girl playing with a kitten, exhibited at the Salon of 1885, became a famous image due to its use in advertisements for Pears Soap, and the artist produced several versions of this theme.
Musem Collections
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Besançon
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
