Edmond Jean de Pury
Baron Edmond Jean de Pury was a Swiss painter and engraver.
Biography
De Pury was born on 6 March 1845 in Neuchâtel. He was a member of the de Pury family, a Prussian noble family of Swiss origin, and was a nephew of James-Ferdinand de Pury.He trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, studying painting and engraving. While at school in Paris, he was a student of Charles Gleyre
In a composite group portrait of students in Gleyre's atelier, de Pury was painted in the nude by fellow student Alfred Lenglet. Another student, Paul Milliet, wrote of the image in his memoirs: "The fragment…shows the athletic torso of…de Pury. Alfred Lenglet's painting is solid and luminous, but to render completely the elegant vigor of the model would have required the chisel of a Greek sculptor."
Although he painted landscapes, de Pury's main focus was portraiture. He was best known for his Italian figure paintings, mainly of working-class people of Rome, Capri, and Venice. The highest price for one of his paintings was US$40,599 in 2007 for In the Lagoons of Venice. His paintings were exhibited in Paris. His portrait of Richard Wagner was completed two years before the composer's death. His work is displayed in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Bern, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Museum des Beaux-Arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds, the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève, and the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts.
In 1889 de Pury was awarded a medal at the Exposition Universelle.