Jules-Antoine Castagnary (11 April 1830 – 11 May 1888) was a French liberal politician, journalist and progressive and influential art critic, who embraced the new term "Impressionist" in his positive and perceptive review of the first Impressionist show, in Le Siècle, 29 April 1874.[1]
His portrait by his intimate friend Gustave Courbet (1870), whose art Castagnary championed from the first and whose radical role during the Paris Commune Castagnary defended after Courbet's death,[4] is now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.[5] The correspondence between the two men is a fundamental document in analyzing Courbet's life and output.[6]
At the time of his death in Paris, Castagnary was engaged in a full-length biography of Courbet, left incomplete; he is buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris.
Selected works
Philosophie du salon de 1857, 1858
Les Artistes au XIXe siècle : Salon de 1861, 1861
Grand Album des Expositions de peinture et de sculpture. 69 tableaux et statues, 1863
Les Libres Propos, 1864
Le Bilan de l'année 1868, politique, littéraire, dramatique, artistique et scientifique, (contributor with Paschal Grousset, Arthur Ranc and Francisque Sarcey), 1869
Les Jésuites devant la loi française, 1877
Exposition des œuvres de G. Courbet à l'École des Beaux-Arts en mai 1882, (exhibition catalogue), 1882. Curated and edited by Castagnary.
Gustave Courbet et la colonne Vendôme : plaidoyer pour un ami mort, 1883