Life
He enrolled in 1821 at the École des beaux-arts where he attended the workshop of Guillaume Guillon Lethière and received a solid classical training. Next he made a présentation for the prix de Rome, in 1824, in which he finished logiste. He became the companion of Eugène Devéria and an intimate of Victor Hugo as well as different Parisian Romantic circles, which had a decisive effect on his career.
He saw great success at the Salon of 1827 thanks to his Supplice de Mazeppa, was awarded a medal on the occasion of a special salon for the new school, which also showed La Naissance d'Henri IV by Eugène Devéria and La Mort de Sardanapale by Delacroix. However, this success did not continue in the young painter's career. He painted the portrait of several personalities of the era, including the most famous example, Balzac in a monk's robe, now at the musée des beaux-arts in Tours. Several of Boulanger's works are held at the maison Victor Hugo in place des Vosges, Paris.
He was illustrator of several Romantic works of Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, as well as a series of strange lithographs on fantastical themes customarily attached to the frenetic vein which certain artists exploited in this period. La Ronde du Sabbat by Louis Boulanger is the only icon of this poorly-studied tendency.
Read more about this topic: Louis Boulanger
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
“Thus far women have been the mere echoes of men. Our laws and constitutions, our creeds and codes, and the customs of social life are all of masculine origin. The true woman is as yet a dream of the future. A just government, a humane religion, a pure social life await her coming.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)