Richard Clague (American, 1821 to 1873)
The son of a wealthy businessman and a French Creole mother, Richard Claque spent his childhood in both Paris and New Orleans. As a teenager, Richard was sent to Switzerland and then to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris to receive a formal education in the fine arts. At the Ecole, Clague was influenced by the emergence of the Barbizon artists and their interest in plein-aire rural landscapes.
In 1856, Clague was commissioned by French Emperor Napoleon III to document the Lesseps expedition in search of the source of the Nile River. After serving in the American Civil War, Clague turned toward the swamps and marshes of southern Louisiana as a continual source of inspiration for his paintings.
Clague is regarded as the first major Louisiana landscape painter of the 19th century and helped introduce European painting traditions, particularly those of the Barbizon School, to the area. He sought to portray nature in its more coarse and basic reality seeking out locations that were peopled with farm animals. Clague’s landscape art was first created in the high noon of old South prosperity, and endured the transition of war and reconstruction to spawn a lasting artistic legacy. Credited with establishing the Louisiana school of landscape painting, Clague influenced and taught many artists including William Henry Buck and Marshall J. Smith.
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