Lot 499: Philippe Tanneur 1795-1878

An Oil on Canvas depicting a seascape and SLR (Tanneur 1857). Measures approx. 26" by 19.5" framed and approx. 23" by 16.5" without frame. Son of a gunner, Philippe Tanneur was born in Marseilles in Fort Saint-Jean in 1795 and began an adventurous life: he was a privateer but after a foot injury he renounced this career to enter as a musician In the Customs Corps. He then worked in a cooperage and created in the district of the Catalans a small workshop of painters. The sign of his shop, on which he painted a view of the Catalans, attracted the attention of influential persons who determined him to settle in Paris, where he was introduced to the Duchess of Berry, who had him admitted to the studio at Vernet. He exhibited at the Salon in 1829 Souvenir de Véronne He had great success after which he was sponsored by Charles X to accompany the expeditionary force of Algiers in order to paint the landing of the troops. His great talent earned him other protections, those of Louis-Philippe and Tsar Nicholas I, but he had a very difficult personality that made him lose one after the other. After a trip to Russia, he received the protection of the Tsar, and entered into the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, where he had as a pupil Ivan Aivazovsky. While traveling to America with his family, his ship the steamer Humbolt was wrecked on December 18, 1855 in Halifax; The passengers were almost all saved and the artist painted a canvas of this shipwreck.