Flora

Paul-Albert Besnard French

Not on view

Paul-Albert Besnard (1849-1934) was a student of the academic painter Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889), won the prix de Rome in 1874 and was among the founders of the Société Nationale in 1890. Throughout his career his style remained in between academic and impressionistic. During the last thirty years of his life he held important positions in the Académie de France in Rome, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Académie française, the Académie de Saint Luc and the Royal Academy.
'La Flore de Le Gros' was one of four etchings by Besnard which illustrated the 1899 republication of 'Les Perles Rouges' by Comte Robert de Montesquiou (1855-1921). It depicts a sculpture of Flora on a plinth, holding a garland of flowers in her left hand while leaves fall on to her from a chestnut tree on her right.

Flora, Paul-Albert Besnard (French, Paris 1849–1934 Paris), Etching; third state of four; very rare

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