Loubon studied under Jean-Antoine Constantin at the municipal drawing school directed by Louis-Mathurin Clérian in his native Aix-en-Provence. In 1829 he accompanied François-Marius Granet (a former pupil of Constantin) to Italy, where he remained until 1831. "There he made, before the eyes of Granet, who thought highly of them, a numerous series of sketches." (M. de Vaines, "Discours de réception prononcé dans la séance publique du 27 mai 1866," Memoires de l'Académie des sciences, belles lettres et arts de Marseille, Marseilles, 1867, cited in Le XIXe siècle, exh. cat., Talabardon & Gautier, Paris, 2008, unpaginated, under nos. 9–11.) The present work is one of approximately twenty landscape oil sketches by the artist that descended in his family and surfaced on the art market about 2008–10.
Loubon was a successful genre painter and as director of the drawing academy on Marseilles he had a direct influence on a generation of Provençal artists, including Adolphe Monticelli and Paul Guigou.
[2013]
