Pierre Emmanuel Damoye
French (1847-1916)
Pierre Emmanuel Damoye was born in Paris in 1847. He studied under Camille Corot, Charles-François Daubigny, and Léon Bonnat at the École des Beaux-Arts beginning in 1875, the same year he debuted at the Salon. Damoye won a bronze medal in 1879, a silver in 1884, and gold at the 1889 Exposition Universelle. He was a founding member of the new Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1890 following the split between Bouguereau and Meissonier over the direction of the Salon. An induction to the Legion of Honor in 1893 and elevation to jury member of the Salon in 1900 cemented his status as one of the most important heirs to the Barbizon School tradition. His paintings carry elements of the visual language employed by Daubigny and Corot; the precision in color and form associated with Realist works, but passed through a lyrical lens that gives the natural world, so often only a background feature, its own gravity.
Works by Damoye reside in the collections of the Musée du Louvre and Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Troyes; and National Museum of Art in Bucharest, among others.
