1837 -1883 · Bédarieux, Toulouse and Paris

Academic grace, transparent fabrics and sentimental stories make Pierre-Auguste Cot a popular master of the French Salon.

Pierre-Auguste Cot was born in Bédarieux in 1837 and died in Paris in 1883. Trained in Toulouse then in Paris with masters of academic painting such as Alexandre Cabanel and William Bouguereau, he combined precise drawing, smooth modeling and immediately readable subjects. The Salon became the main theater of his career. Le Printemps, exhibited in 1873, enjoyed spectacular success: two young lovers swayed in the undergrowth, their fabrics, their looks and their movement transforming the idyll into a universal image of first love. Reproduced on engravings, fans, porcelain and tapestries, the work made Cot an international celebrity. The Storm, commissioned by the new York collector Catharine Lorillard Wolfe and presented at the Salon of 1880, takes up the couple on the run under a veil swollen by the rain. The source may evoke Paul and Virginie or Daphnis and Chloé; ambiguity reinforces his poetry. Cot is also a sought-after portraitist. The Portrait of Alice Heine, future princess of Monaco, unites worldly distinction and softness of complexion. Bohemian highlights character and costume in a more picturesque vein. Under an apparently perfect technique, Cot constructs his effects through diagonals, transparencies and crossed gestures. Bohemian highlights character and costume in a more picturesque vein. Under a seemingly perfect technique, Cot constructs his effects through diagonals, transparencies and crossed gestures. Bohemian highlights character and costume in a more picturesque vein. Under a seemingly perfect technique, Cot constructs his effects through diagonals, transparencies and crossed gestures. His painting embodies the late academic ideal: beauty of the body, clear emotion and sufficiently virtuosity discreet to suggest spontaneity. The "Pierre-Auguste Cot" selection notably compares L’Orage and Le Printemps. His reading favors space.

Cot transforms virtuosity into momentum: drawing disappears under grace, fabric becomes movement and the sentimental story seems to be born in a single breath.