Charles Joshua Chaplin

{{short description|French painter}} {{Other people|Charles Chaplin}} {{Infobox artist | name = Charles Joshua Chaplin | birth_date = {{Birth date|df=y|1825|6|8}} | birth_place = Les Andelys, Eure, France | death_date = {{Death date and age|df=y|1891|1|30|1825|6|8}} | death_place = Paris, France | resting_place = Père Lachaise Cemetery | education = École des Beaux-Arts, Paris | alma_mater = | known_for = Painting, decorative painting (Tuileries Palace, Palais de l’Elysée). | notable_works = | style = Neo-Rococo, realism (early work) | movement = Academic art | children = | parents = | awards = | caption = Portrait of Charles Joshua Chaplin by Célestin Nanteuil | image = Charles Chaplin (peintre) par Célestin Nanteuil.jpg }} thumbnail|right|''Reflection'' '''Charles Joshua Chaplin''' (8 June 1825 – 30 January 1891) was a French painter and printmaker who painted both landscapes and portraits. He worked in techniques such as pastels, lithography, watercolor, chalk, oil painting and etching. He was best known for his elegant portraits of young women.

==Biography==

Charles Joshua Chaplin was born on 8 June 1825 in Les Andelys, Eure, France. His mother, Olympia Adelle Moisy, was French, whereas his father, John Chaplin, was an art broker from England. Charles Chaplin spent his whole life in France, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1886.<ref name=Morant>Morant 143–152</ref><ref name=Avant>{{cite web|url=http://www.charles-chaplin.info/|title=Charles J. Chaplin|publisher=Avant Propos|access-date=16 April 2014 | first=Adeline | last=Germond }}</ref> He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1840, and he took private lessons in the studio of Michel Martin Drolling, whose apprentices included Paul Baudry, Jules Breton and Jean-Jacques Henner. Later he also taught at the École des Beaux-Arts.<ref name=Avant />

In 1845, he entered the Paris Salon, the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, as a portrait and landscape painter with the painting ''Portrait of the Artist's Mother''. Chaplin conducted art classes specifically for women at his studio, including Marie Joséphine Nicolas. The American artist Mary Cassatt, the French artist Louise Abbéma and the English artist Louise Jopling were among Chaplin's students. His son Arthur Chaplin (1869-1935) was also a painter. Chaplin died on 30 January 1891, aged 65, in Paris as a wealthy man and is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.<ref name=Oxford>{{cite web|url= http://www.answers.com/topic/charles-joshua-chaplin#ixzz2z39k092X|title=Oxford Grove Art: Charles Joshua Chaplin|publisher= Answers|access-date=16 April 2014}}</ref><ref name=Ankele>Ankele & Ankele</ref>

==Career==

===Early work=== thumb|right|''The Bird's Nest'', private collection, 1860 Chaplin made his debut at the Salon with portraits, but he also painted landscapes, particularly the countryside of Auvergne. His early works, from 1848 to 1851, were painted in a manner characterized by an interest in realism, a style established in the French Second Republic, that had the motto ''Liberté, égalité, fraternité'', and was ruled for three years by the republican government of France from the 1848 Revolution until the 1851 coup by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. Realism was an artistic movement that began in France in the 1850s, after the 1848 Revolution.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rlsm/hd_rlsm.htm | title=Nineteenth–Century French Realism |access-date=17 April 2014 |publisher=The Metropolitan Museum of Art }}</ref> From the late 18th century Romanticism dominated French art and literature but was spurned by Realists, who revolted against the display of the emotions of the Romantic movement, seeking to depict real and characteristic contemporary individuals and situations with truth and accuracy.<ref name="National">{{cite web | url=http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/glossary/realist-movement | title=Realist movement (Glossary) | publisher=National Gallery | access-date=21 April 2014}}</ref>

Chaplin painted many works in his early days, including floral studies that were displayed at the Salon de las Flores. Later, in the late 1850s, he abandoned naturalism, his earlier style, exchanging it for a more graceful, elegant and supple technique that brought him a certain notoriety in France during his time as a portrait painter; as such he embraced the idyllic and voluptuous and fashionable style of the prominent French painter, François Boucher (1703–1770).<ref name=Master>{{cite web|url=http://www.iment.com/maida/family/mother/vicars/charleschaplin.htm|title=Charles Joshua Chaplin (1825-1891)|publisher=Master Paintings Index|access-date=16 April 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304194940/http://www.iment.com/maida/family/mother/vicars/charleschaplin.htm|archive-date=4 March 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref>

He also embraced the tradition of the great English portraitists. He developed his very own style of painting but was inspired by the British painters Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. He used to engrave the works of the Dutch artist Pieter Paul Rubens and gained further influence from his work.<ref name=Avant />

===Later work=== Gradually the muddy colours used by Chaplin transformed into white, grey and pink, depicting his models with an opalescent, mother-of-pearl complexion by applying a subtle palette of rosy flesh tones and light greys. After painting portraits and trying his skills on ornamental painting, Chaplin took up genre painting in the 1850s. His favourite subjects are the feminine grace of a young woman's everyday life. He portrays women in several poses: resting; grooming; singing; and reading. He captures them with lightness and carelessness and accentuates the decorative elements of the composition.<ref name=Avant />

Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III and an admirer of the "Pompadour style", rapidly fell under the enchantment of the painter's neo-Rococo works. Chaplin was among Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie's favourite court artists. In 1859, when his portrait of ''Aurora'' was banned by the judges of the Salon as "too erotically suggestive", Napoléon III defended Chaplin and overturned the disqualification order.<ref name=Gallery /> He was similarly valued as an interior decorator and was appointed to remodel the decor of Empress Eugénie's rooms.<ref name=Gallery>{{cite web|url=http://www.galeriearyjan.com/en/artiste-782-chaplin-charles.htm|title=Charles Chaplin (1825-1891) |publisher=Gallery AJ|access-date=16 April 2014}}</ref>

His sensual portraits of women and young girls, often with models posed erotically in hazy surroundings and frequently wearing transparent clothing, attracted the interest of the high society and aristocracy of Paris during the French Third Republic (1870–1940) guaranteeing his success and wealth. He was one of the most popular painters of his time, but nowadays his work is almost unknown, in spite of the fact that his works hang in many major museums around the world.<ref name=Avant />

He employed his Rococo style for his mythological scenes and genre scenes paintings. His genre pictures formed a significant part of his work. In 1861, working as a decorative painter. Chaplin painted the doors and several glass panels above them of the Salon des Fleurs in the Tuileries Palace.<ref name=Oxford /> The Palace was gutted by fire in 1871 and its ruins swiftly demolished.<ref name="NYSun">{{cite news | url=http://www.nysun.com/foreign/paris-to-rebuild-lost-tuileries-palace-burned/37806/ | title=Paris To Rebuild Lost Tuileries Palace | date=14 August 2006 | access-date=18 April 2014 | first=Samuel | last=Henry | newspaper=New York Sun }}</ref> He also undertook decorating work in the Salon de l’Hémicycle of the Palais de l’Elysée.<ref name=Oxford />

===Honours and awards=== thumb|''A Song Silenced'', private collection As a member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, Chaplin exhibited his paintings at the Paris Salon, the official exhibition venue of members' work. He began exhibiting his paintings at the French Artists' Salon in 1845 and was represented there habitually each year. These exhibitions made him one of France's most famous portrait artists. Commencing in 1847, his work was exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy in London.<ref name=Gallery />

He ws awarded several medals for his works: a third class medal in 1851; a second class medal the following year; and an Honour Medal in 1865. He was declared Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 1879,<ref name=Gallery /> also known as The National Order of the Legion of Honour.<ref name=Speech>Roederer 101–102.</ref> Chaplin was elevated to ''Officier'' in 1881.<ref name=Gallery />

Chaplin's artistic talent was admired by renowned writers, painters and critics such as Arsène Houssaye, Émile Zola and Théophile Gautier. Édouard Manet felt Chaplin knew "the smile of a woman".<ref name=Avant /> It was his portraits of young women that gained him particular success.<ref name=Master />

His works can be viewed in the French museums of Bordeaux, Bayonne, Bourges, Mulhouse, Paris, Reims, Rouen, Saintes (Charente-Maritime), and the Louvre Museum Graphic Art Database. Outside France his works can be found in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Harvard Art Museums in Massachusetts and the Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indiana.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/chaplin_charles.html |title=Paintings in Museums and Public Art Galleries Worldwide|publisher=Art Encyclopedia|access-date=16 April 2014}}</ref> Chaplin has several paintings in a public collection in the United Kingdom at the Bowes Museum.<ref>{{Art UK bio|name=Charles Chaplin}}</ref>

One of Chaplin's paintings was sold at an auction in Paris on 5 June 1922. Described by the auctioneer as a landscape painting by Charles Chaplin, it achieved an unexpectedly high price for an artist considered to have "fallen into oblivion". Most of the bidders mistakenly believed it was a work of art by the comedian and actor Charlie Chaplin and thought they would acquire a remarkable find.<ref name="Artnews">{{cite journal | jstor=25589989 | title=What's in a name – at auction? | journal=American Art News |date=June 1922 | volume=20 | issue=37 | pages=4}}{{subscription required}}</ref> ''The New York Times'' reported it stating: "The disappointment of the ultimate buyer may be imagined when it was discovered that the picture was by an almost forgotten artist."<ref name="Times">{{cite news | url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1922/06/06/99026955.pdf | title=Bid high for Chaplin picture, but it wasn't by Charlie | date=6 June 1922 | access-date=19 April 2014 | newspaper=The New York Times }}</ref>

File:Chaplin-A Beauty with Doves.jpg|''Young Girl with a Dove'', private collection<ref name=Renewal>{{cite web|url=http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artist.php?artistid=663|title=Charles Chaplin, French painter|publisher=Art Renewal Center|access-date=16 April 2014}}</ref> File:Chaplin-La ragazza col nido-1869.jpg|''Young Girl with a Nest'', 1869 Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon File:Charles Chaplin Das Stubenmädchen.jpg|''After The Ball'', private collection<ref name=Renewal /> File:Chaplin-La Fille Du Peintre-1881.jpg|''The Daughter of the Painter'', private collection, 1881<ref name=Renewal />

File:Chaplin-Blowing Bubbles.jpg|''Blowing Bubbles'', private collection<ref name=Renewal /> File:Chaplin-Her Favourite Dog.jpg|''Her Favourite Dog'', private collection File:Chaplin-Young Woman with Flower Basket.jpg|''Young Woman with Flower Basket'', private collection Image:Charles Chaplin - Reviere.jpg|''Rêverie'', National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires  </gallery>

==References==

===Citations=== {{reflist|30em}}

===Bibliography=== *{{cite book | url=https://www.amazon.co.uk/Charles-Joshua-Chaplin-Academic-Paintings-ebook/dp/B005QV5R42#_ | title=Charles Joshua Chaplin, Academic Paintings ebook | publisher=Amazon | year=2011 | asin=B005QV5R42 |first1=Daniel|last1=Ankele|first2=Denise|last2=Ankele |chapter=Chapter: Biography}} *{{cite journal | title=Charles Joshua Chaplin: An Anglo-French Artist, 1825–1891 | author=Morant, Valerie E. | journal=Gazette des Beaux-Arts |date=October 1989 | volume=114 }} *{{cite book|last=Roederer|first=Pierre-Louis|editor=Rafe Blaufarb|title=Napoleon: A Symbol for an Age: A Brief History with Documents|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kDyx2GIQKVAC|year=2008|publisher=Bedford/St. Martin's|isbn=978-0-312-43110-5|chapter=Speech Proposing the Creation of a Legion of Honour}}

==External links== {{commons category|Charles Joshua Chaplin}} * Works of Charles Joshua Chaplin on [https://www.artrenewal.org/artists/charles-chaplin/663 Art Renewal Centre website] * [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXN4FY9iLpg Works of Charles Joshua Chaplin ]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chaplin, Charles Joshua}} Category:1825 births Category:1891 deaths Category:People from Les Andelys Category:French people of English descent Category:19th-century French painters Category:French male painters Category:Academic artists Category:French portrait painters Category:French Realist painters Category:École des Beaux-Arts alumni Category:Officers of the Legion of Honour Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery Category:19th-century French male artists