Henri Blanc-Fontaine

Henri Emmanuel Blanc-Fontaine was a French painter. He created genre scenes, portraits, landscapes, and still lifes.

Biography

He had originally planned to have a legal career, but followed the advice of his friend, Diodore Rahoult, a rising local artist, and went to Paris, where he was a pupil of Léon Cogniet. In 1843, he also enrolled at the École de Beaux-Arts. He had his first exhibit at the Salon of 1848. Rahoult introduced him to landscape painting in 1853, and that became his favorite subject after 1870.
He was also a pupil of Jean Achard and François-Auguste Ravier in Charlieu. The painter, Eugénie Gruyer-Brielman, was his sister-in-law, by her relationship to his wife, Julie Amélie, née Gruyer.
In 1868, he and Rahoult were commissioned to decorate the new. He was member of the artists' colony in Proveysieux and was associated a while with. His paintings can be seen at the Museum of Grenoble, the Musée dauphinois and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chambéry. His painting Souvenir de La Grave won an honorable mention at the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris, and was noticed by Maxime Du Camp.