Louis Henry Mignot Sold at Auction Prices

Landscape painter, b. 1831 - d. 1870

(born 1831 Charleston, South Carolina; died 1870) American painter. Sole southerner of the Hudson River School, Louis Remy Mignot traveled to the Netherlands at 17 years old to study art. A portfolio mainly consisting of Dutch winter landscapes, he moved to New York in the 1850s and became an established landscape artist by 1855. Mignot became friends with Frederick Church and in 1857 was invited to join Church on an expedition to South America. While in South America they traveled to Columbia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, and it was on this trip that Mignot developed his own style. Unlike Church, who painted grandiose landscapes with sharp clarity, Mignot was inspired by the more intimate but equally transcendent scenery of the rivers and jungles. The work he created during this trip proved quite successful, capturing the imaginations of Americans by depicting South America as a tropical paradise. When the American Civil War broke out in the 1860s Mignot moved to Europe; not feeling welcome in New York as a secessionist. While abroad he became friends with fellow American painter James McNeill Whistler. He continued painting in his expressive style. He died at 39 years old of smallpox; fleeing Paris for London during the Franco-Prussian War. A memorial show was held for Mignot in 1876; the next retrospective of his work not being until well over a hundred years later at the North Carolina Museum of Art.