Hector Caffieri Art
Hector Caffieri was a fine British watercolorist, born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire in England in 1847. He was the son of French parents who had settled temporarily in England. Following a stint in the navy, which poor health eventually obliged him to leave, Caffieri headed to Paris, part of a generation of young British artists traveling to Europe in the 1870s and 1880s to complete their artistic education. He studied at the Académie Julian with Jules Joseph Lefebvre and under the academic painter Léon Bonnat before returning to London, where he began exhibiting at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Society of British Artists at Suffolk Street and the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, to which he was elected in 1885. Caffieri traveled regularly across the Channel to the French coastal town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he made studies of the fisherfolk, peasants and children, along with watercolors of quaysides and coastal scenes, all of which constituted his principal subject matter. He settled there permanently in 1897 and became an active member of the Société des Beaux-Arts et des Arts Décoratifs du Boulonnais until 1925, the last time he participated in its annual exhibitions. He also maintained regular contact with the London art world where his work was appreciated and found a ready market. An exhibition of his watercolors, “Cliff, coast and quay”, was held at the Continental Gallery, London in 1902. Caffieri’s style, however, developed in a self-consciously artistic direction. His loose, painterly technique often combined watercolor and dilute body color in a highly decorative manner. He favored pleasing compositions with the masts and rigging of fishing boats silhouetted against misty skies, the washes merging softly one into the other, avoiding the dissonance of hard edges. He habitually used a palette of pale greys, ochres, yellows, blues and reds, manipulating the fluid pigment to create diffuse, blurred effects and marvelous realizations of atmosphere and mood.
Late 19th Century Victorian Hector Caffieri Art
Watercolor
1840s Romantic Hector Caffieri Art
Watercolor
1940s American Realist Hector Caffieri Art
Paper, Watercolor
1930s American Realist Hector Caffieri Art
Paper, Ink, Gouache
1910s Other Art Style Hector Caffieri Art
Watercolor, Paper
1930s Hector Caffieri Art
Gouache, Board
1930s American Realist Hector Caffieri Art
Gouache, Board
1930s American Realist Hector Caffieri Art
Paper, Gouache
1920s Art Deco Hector Caffieri Art
Paper, Gouache
1930s American Modern Hector Caffieri Art
Paper, Ink, Gouache
Late 19th Century Old Masters Hector Caffieri Art
Ink, Gouache
Late 19th Century Realist Hector Caffieri Art
Watercolor
Early 20th Century Victorian Hector Caffieri Art
Paper, Watercolor, Drypoint, Etching
Early 1900s Impressionist Hector Caffieri Art
Watercolor, Pencil, Gouache
1890s Victorian Hector Caffieri Art
Watercolor