Raphaël Collin

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Raphaël Collin was born and raised in Paris, where he became a prominent academic painter and in later life a well-known professor at the École des Beaux-Arts.

Around 1873 he began successfully exhibiting at the Salon. He won a number of prizes that helped launch his career, and before long he was receiving inncreasingly prestigious commissions to paint largescale murals in major public buildings aroound Paris. Over the course of his career he painted murals in some of the most prominent cultural centers of Paris: the Hotel de Ville, the Théatre de l'éon, and the Opéra Comique.

Collin´s early work closely followed the essential tenets of French academism. Like the Renaissance painters they admired, the nineteenth-century academicians used historical, religious, or allegorical painting to communicate an idea. Within the parameters of this literary art, Collin made subtle modifications to the accepted academic style, introducing elements of the impressionist technique into his allegorical scenes. Such formal techniques as iformal composition and bright color evoked the light filled landscapes of impressionism rather than the dark chiaroscuro of Renaissance painting.

During the last few decades of the nnineteenth century, academic painting in France was in crisis, eclipsed by the new artistic movements of impressionism and symbolism. Collin´s friendship with members of the impressionists provided him with insights into the new direction contemporary painting was taking. He adapted his work accordingly and in such paintings as Young Woman, he found a compromise between the academic style and the new painterly innovations of the impressionists and the Nabis. Collin began to emphasize the picture surface by reducing the spatial depth of his paintings as well as composing with areas of concentrated color. Yet he never completely abandoned the hallmarks of academicism: allegory and naturalism.

Collin figured prominently in artistic exchanges between Paris and Tokyo durling the late nineteenth century as Kuroda Seiki, Kume Keiichirō, and Okada Saburōsuki (1869-1939), among others, studied in his studio. Kuroda and Kume, who subsequently assumed professorships at the Tokyo School of Finne Arts (Tokyo Bijitsu Gakkō), were especially instrumental in introducing to Japan Collin´s academic teaching methods as well as the lighter palette, brushwork, and plein-air approach he espoused. Collin´s mentorship of the first generation of Japanese oil painters contributed to the special respect he continues to enjoy among Japanese collectors.

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Edition: Guth,Christine M.E., Volk, Alicia, Yamanashi,Emiko, Japan & Paris: Impressionism, Postimpressionism, and the Moderne Era, Honolulu Academy of Arts, Sep 15, 2004. ISBN 0937426644