Eugène Chigot


Eugène Henri Alexandre Chigot was a post impressionist French painter. A pupil of his father, the military painter Alphonse Chigot in 1880 he entered the internationally renowned École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he was exposed to the realist movement of the Barbizon School and to impressionism. He settled in Étaples in the Pas-de-Calais in an artists’ colony, later returning to Paris where he became a founder of the Salon d’Automne. An official military painter he served in the Great War.
Chigot’s reputation was built on his maritime and landscape paintings that arose from his affinity to Flanders and the Pas-de-Calais and to his extensive travels within France and to Italy and Spain.

Early years

Eugène Chigot was born in Valenciennes in French Flanders on 22 November 1860, the fourth child of six of Alphonse Chigot and Pauline Chigot . His father was a former soldier and war artist who had served in the North African campaigns of the 1840s and later studied art in Valenciennes under Julien Potier. Eugène attended the Collège et Lycée Notre Dame des Dunes in Dunkerque where he met and befriended Henri Le Sidaner, who was to become a lifelong friend and supporter.
His initial art training was as a pupil with his father Alphonse who operated an atelier in Valenciennes. His Father was not supportive of his son becoming a full-time artist but acquiesced to his son’s wishes upon the intervention of his artist colleague Alfred Philippe Roll, a former pupil of Léon Bonnat at the École des Beaux-Arts.
In 1880 Chigot entered the internationally prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, at which he studied under Bonnat, Paul Vayson and Alexandre Cabanel, who had the greatest influence on the young Chigot. Although Cabanel generally painted in an academic style, that were dismissed derisively as L'art pompier by some critics, he was a skilled painter with a deep knowledge of nineteenth century French art, in particular impressionism and the naturalism of the Barbizon School from which Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Charles-François Daubigny were significant influences on Chigot. Chigot’s interests in the use of colour, softness of form and in atmospheric weather were formed under Cabanel’s tutelage.

The Colonie artistique d'Étaples

Following his pupillage in Paris, Chigot became something of a peripatetic journeyman as he searched for an appropriate environment from where he could paint. Initially he travelled to the south of France and to Italy before arriving in Spain in 1887 where he spent the year. At this stage in his career Chigot favoured ‘En plein air’ painting, a theory credited to Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes that he expounded in a treatise entitled Reflections and Advice to a Student on Painting, Particularly on Landscape developing the concept of landscape portraiture by which the artist paints directly onto canvas in situ within the landscape. It enables the artist to better capture the changing details of weather and light.
Eugène Chigot began exhibiting at the Paris Salon in 1884 and would continue to do so until 1924. He was commended by the jury in 1885, before winning a third class medal in 1887 and a second-class medal in 1890. These successes came with a monetary award which funded his stay in Spain.
He then joined his long-term friend Henri Le Sidaner at Étaples on the Opal Coast, south of Calais where they established an artists’ workshop and regular exhibitions that would eventually develop into a school of art, called the Villa des Roses.Étaples had a tradition of en plein air painting established by Charles-François Daubigny, who retreated there from the outbreak of the Paris Commune in 1871 and of the local Deauville painter Eugène Boudin, a leading post impressionist. In the period until the start of World War I in 1914 the area attracted numerous artists from abroad particularly the United States, Australia and the British Isles
Chigot lived in the area for most of the next twenty years initially at the villa attached to his studio in Étaples until in 1895 when he bought a house in the new and wealthy resort of Le Touquet.He married Martha Colle in 1893 and spent part of the honeymoon at Berck, a favoured haunt of Manet in the 1870s, where he had a studio.The union produced a son Paul Louis, born in 1906 who was become an eminent decorated surgeon and a daughter Mathilde. The Chigots moved again in 1892 to Dunkerque and in 1902 to the western Flanders town of Gravelines at the mouth of the River Aa where he built a chalet by the sea in which to paint.
Chigot's output during the 1890s was usually of an post impressionistic style, in which he depicted beach scenes with expansive skies, atmospheric seascapes, and local châteaux often with a pond in the foreground. His figures are intimate and placed within the coastal landscape. Chigot possessed the ability to convincingly paint still and moving water.

Return to Paris and the Salon d’Automne

Eugène Chigot was an active participant in the founding of the Salon d'Automne, now an annual art exhibition held in Paris, which opened on 31 October 1903. Perceived as a reaction against the conservative policies of the official Paris Salon, the new exhibition was an immediate success showcasing developments and innovations in early 20th Century art. The Salon d’Automne from its inception received strong support from artists across the artistic spectrum including some of the most established artists in France that included: Paul Cézanne, Édouard Vuillard and Auguste Rodin who featured works at the inaugural exhibition. At the 1905 exhibition Chigot exhibited three canvases featuring the Flanders landscape: Le Soir à Vormouth, Place morte, Jardin en Flanders. The salon also witnessed the birth of Fauvism in 1905 and of Cubism in 1910.
The febrile artistic atmosphere of the later Belle Époque undoubtedly affected Eugène Chigot, who was based in Paris from 1908. Whilst Chigot could not be seen as a radical painter it is possible to see a second period in his work from 1905 –1923where he has incorporated elements of modernist movements especially in the use of colour which becomes more vibrant and abstract in this later period. During this second period Eugène Chigot painted the landscapes of different regions of France. He continued to be inspired by the light and landscapes of Flanders but he also painted in: Normandy, Brittany and Ile de France in the north and in Clisson and in the forests of Nivernais. He was drawn to the light and exuberant colours of the Côte d'Azur also painting a few canvases over the France-Italy border in Liguria notably at Dolceacqua.
In 1891 Chigot had accepted the offer to become an official painter for the Marine Nationale, thus following in his father’s footsteps. The position necessitated a series of official paintings to commerate notable events. In 1893 Chigot completed a number of official paintings to mark President Émile Loubet visit to the French and Italian fleets at Toulon. Then in 1897 he was commissioned by President Felix Faure to capture the moment when Faure left France to meet the Russian Tzar and sign the Franco-Russian Alliance. In 1893 Chigot was once again commissioned to paint a series of official paintings to mark President Émile Loubet visit to the French and Italian fleets at Toulon and for the visit of the Russian Admiral Theodor Avellan to Toulon. At the outset of the Great War he was assigned to the armed forces. In 1917 he was sent on an undisclosed mission with the army. On his return he was visibly changed by what he had witnessed and retreated to his studio.
His health continued to decline in spite of a visit to the Côte d'Azur in late 1918 and Eugène Chigot died in Paris on July 14 1923.

Public collections (selected)

Examples of Chigot’s work can be found at : Musée de France d'Opale Sud, Musée Antoine Vivenel, Musée du Touquet-Paris-Plage, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, Musée du Luxembourg, Petit Palais Musée Carnavalet,Indianapolis Museum of Art.
The Association des Amis d'Eugène Chigot in Touquet maintains his legacy.

Works (selected)

Biography