Émile Vernon (French painter) 1872 - 1919
In spite of the fact that Vernon’s work is highly appreciated by collectors, specific knowledge about his training and work remains incomplete. He was a student at the Fine Arts school in Tours where he won the first prize for drawing in 1888. Thereafter he was taught by Bouguereau and Auguste Truphème. In 1898 in Tours, he took part in the exhibition of Fine Arts and Decorative Arts and began at the French Artists Exhibition in the same year. He regularly exhibited his work at the Exhibition from 1898 to 1913, where he presented portraits, landscapes, scenes from Brittany, and bouquets painted in watercolours, as well as feminine figures, which were his speciality. According to his sister, he was asked to do mural decorations, such as the paintings done for the theatre in Châtellerault in 1899. Emile Vernon excelled in his paintings of hazy, sweet figures of children and elegant young people, with whom he often associated a pet animal, garlands or bouquets of flowers, and he painted these throughout his career. But he also knew how to paint with more rigour and severity, for example, in the portrait of Madame Vernon, Sous la Lampe (Under the lamp). The fact that he mastered the graphics of his work, and painted the lighting in a clever, seductive manner, made his portraits charming and of a very high quality.
