Eugene Deveria

Eugène Devéria (1805-1865) Au salon, signed drawing

Circa 1830

Eugène Devéria was born in Paris on April 22 , 1805 and he died in Pau on February, 1865. He was a romantic and historical painter. With Eugène Delacroix and Louis Boulanger, he is one of the leading representatives of the French Romantic movement in painting. The Devéria family was a family of artists with not only Achille and Eugene, but also Laure the youngest, who showed a real talent as a designer and exhibited successfully at the Salon. She died prematurely in May 1838. In the years 1820-1830, the Parisian home of Devéria attracted artists and musicians: "Romanticism was at home in Devéria as it was then said ..." , will remember years later the poet Theophile Gautier, Eugene's great friend. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris under the direction of Girodet-Trioson and Guillaume Guillon Lethière. The young painter received many official commissions: a painting, intended for the ceiling of a room of the Louvre, entitled "Puget presenting his Milon de Crotone to Louis XIV", portraits of historical figures for the Museum of the History of France that Louis-Philippe wanted to create at Versailles; he took part in the construction of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette church in Paris. He accepted in 1838 the proposal to leave the capital for Avignon where he was proposed to redo all the painted decoration of the Notre-Dame des Doms cathedral. The magnitude of the task, the insalubrity of the place and a dreadful flood where he fails to perish with his family exhaust the painter who, sick, weakened, left the papal city to recover in Béarn. In 1841, cured, he moved permanently to Pau where he remained until his death.