Louis Rémy Mignot | Hudson River School

Louis Rémy Mignot (1831-1870) was among the Hudson River School style of painters and did numerous tropical landscapes of Panama and Ecuador as well as scenes of upper New York state and some of the Southern states. Louis Rémy Mignot was short lived, dying at age 39.
Louis Remy Mignot was born in 1831 in Charleston, South Carolina. His father Remy Mignot was a French Catholic immigrant who owned a confectionary shop in Charleston. His boyhood, during which he demonstrated a precocious artistic talent, seems to have been spent in his grandfather's home, near Charleston.

In 1848, Louis Remy Mignot left for Holland and studied for four years with Andreas Schelfhout at The Hague. Louis Remy Mignot also traveled through Europe before he returned to the United States to settle in New York, where he received the praise and support of numerous critics, patrons and fellow artists.
In the summer of 1857, Louis Remy Mignot accompanied painter Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) on a four-month expedition to Ecuador, a turning point in the career of Louis Remy Mignot. There he found scenery that provided a major subject of his subsequent work. The two artists journeyed from the coastal rain forests through the Andean highlands and saw impressive ranges of snow-capped volcanoes. After returning to New York in 1858, Louis Remy Mignot earned much critical praise for his South American landscapes.

Most of the paintings by Louis Remy Mignot are not a literal transcription of a specific scene, but instead are imaginative composites of various views and motifs derived from his sketches while traveling.
As an artist, Louis Remy Mignot was always somewhat out of step with those around him. He was a Catholic in a predominantly Protestant homeland, a Southerner transplanted in the North and an American living abroad. Louis Remy Mignot also kept himself slightly outside the mainstream of popular taste and was something of a chameleon who moved easily in and out of various cultures, from his birthplace in South Carolina, to art school in the Netherlands, then to New York City and later back to Europe. Louis Remy Mignot seemed often to redefine himself in an effort to fit in and win the approval of the public, although his talent was well recognized by peers and critics alike.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, with anti-Confederate feeling prevailing in the Northeast, Louis Remy Mignot held a sale of his paintings and on June 26, 1862 departed aboard the Great Eastern for England. Louis Remy Mignot settled in London, where he remained for the rest of his life and his successful career continued. The paintings of Louis Remy Mignot were exhibited at the Royal Academy, the 1867 Paris Exposition and elsewhere. Trips in 1868 and 1869 to Switzerland resulted in a number of Alpine scenes.
Louis Remy Mignot became a casualty of the Franco-Prussian War in France in 1870. During a trip to Paris during the siege, Louis Remy Mignot contracted smallpox and died at the age of thirty-nine, shortly after returning to his home in Brighton, England.
An important exhibition of the collected paintings by Louis Remy Mignot, organized by his widow, was held in London and Brighton in 1876.

Louis Rémy Mignot (Charleston, 3 febbraio 1831 – Brighton, 22 settembre 1870) è stato un pittore Statunitense. Di origini francesi, fu un pittore paesaggista Impressionista della Hudson River School.
Figlio di Rémy e di Elisabeth Mignot, originari di Granville in Normandia, Louis nacque a Charleston. I genitori erano emigrati negli Stati Uniti dopo il rovesciamento della Restaurazione francese a seguito della Rivoluzione di Luglio del 1830.
Suo padre, spirato nel 1848 per insufficienza cardiaca, si oppose sempre alla sua vocazione artistica e solo dopo la sua morte Louis poté imbarcarsi per i Paesi Bassi al fine di ricevere una formazione artistica in Europa. Si recò dunque a L'Aia.
Tornato in America, Mignot sposò Théonie Marie Louise Alexandre de la Rivière, figlia come lui di immigrati francesi, ed entrò nella Hudson River School, dove dipinse paesaggi nordamericani e realizzò la sua famosa tela che mostra le cascate del Niagara. Produsse anche diversi bozzetti e interi quadri sulle foreste tropicali costiere e andine dell'Ecuador, dove si era recato in viaggio. Realizzò inoltre un famoso quadro storico: l'incontro del generale Lafayette e di George Washington a Mount Vernon, avvenuto nel 1784.
Nel 1858 fu accolto nella National Academy of Design, dapprima come membro corrispondente, poi, dopo un anno, come membro effettivo.
Purtroppo lo scoppio della Guerra di Secessione vanificò i suoi progetti artistici per il futuro ed egli preferì imbarcarsi di nuovo per l'Europa nel 1862.
Si recò subito a Londra, dove espose per la Royal Academy, ma fu sempre attratto da Parigi, finché non vi si recò e vi aprì un atelier. La permanenza nella capitale francese lo influenzò moltissimo: egli conobbe da vicino scuole e personaggi e fu affascinato dalle tendenze e dalle tecniche Impressioniste. Dipinse delle vedute della città e le espose al Salon de Paris.
Ma gli eventi bellici lo perseguitavano. Quando nel 1870 scoppiò la Guerra franco-prussiana lasciò il suo studio e la sua abitazione parigina. Indebolito dalle privazioni causate dal conflitto, contrasse una forma di vaiolo e se ne tornò a Londra ammalato.
Morì a Brighton all'età di 39 anni.
La vedova, dopo la rivolta popolare della Comune di Parigi del 1871, tornò in Francia, prese i quadri e i bozzetti che si trovavano ancora nell'atelier parigino di Mignot e ne fece un'esposizione a Londra in memoria del marito. Quindi vendette tutte le opere.