Charles Zacharie Landelle

Portrait of a young Moroccan in profile

1853

Charles Zacharie LANDELLE (Laval, 1821 – Chennevières/Marne, 1908) Son of employee of the prefecture of Laval, Charles Zacharie LANDELLE accompanied his father transferred to Paris in 1827. He will not then return to Laval until the end of his life in 1895 for the inauguration of a museum of painting. Admitted in 1837 to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, he followed the teachings of Paul DELAROCHE and Ary SCHEFFER. His career began with the production of portraits and large religious compositions - notably for the Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, Saint-Sulpice and Saint-Roch churches in Paris - which were an immediate success and enabled him to gain recognition from the high society of the nineteenth century. He began at the Paris Salon of 1841 with a self-portrait noticed by Louis-Philippe, obtained a third class medal the following year and a first class in 1848. LANDELLE was also awarded at the Exposition Universelle of 1855 in Paris, and in Philadelphia. From then on he was able to follow a career as an official painter, between state commissions and portraits of the great people of his time (Portrait of Alfred de MUSSET, kept at the Palace of Versailles). Napoleon III bought him two paintings of the Beatitudes at the Salon of 1852 to donate to Laval, birthplace of the artist and hired him to participate in the decoration of the Salon des Aides de Camp at the Palais de l'Elysée. As early as the 1850s, LANDELLE discovered the Orient by his travels; especially Morocco, where he will have the opportunity to return on an official mission in 1866. He then realized on his return his famous Femme fellah, a work bought by the Emperor on his personal cassette, and unfortunately destroyed in 1870 in France. fire of the Château de Saint-Cloud. He then participated in a trip to Egypt in 1875, and went down the Nile with the Egyptologist Auguste MARIETTE. In 1880, LANDELLE discovered Algeria accompanied by his son Georges, also a painter. Conquered by the place, he decided each year between 1881 and 1892 to spend his winters in Algeria and to bring back some paintings or studies. LANDELLE was made knight of the Legion of Honor. Museums: Amsterdam (Mus. mun.), Londres (Wallace Coll.), Paris, (Mus. du Louvre, Mus. d’Art Mod.), Sydney, Angers, Caen, Compiègne, Laval, Nantes, Pau, Perpignan, Reims, Rouen, Strasbourg, Stuttgart, Versailles…