Magaud (XIX) - Cascade dans les Alpes

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TABLEAU MAGAUD (XIXth century) Cascade in the Alps, HST signed, 40 x 56.5 cm

By decree of December 29, 1886, Dominique Antoine Magaud was named Knight of the Legion of Honor. A street in Marseille’s 7th arrondissement bears his name.
Dominique Magaud is a French painter, born in Marseille on August 4, 1817, and died in the same city on December 23, 1899. Hailing from a bourgeois family, Dominique Antoine Magaud began his career as a sworn weigher. Admitted to the School of Fine Arts of Marseille on October 8, 1839, he studied under Aubert, then completed his studies in Paris where he became Léon Cogniet’s assistant. After leaving the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, he remained in Paris and stayed close to Cogniet’s circle.

Back in Marseille, from 1853 he decorated the grand cafés that were very fashionable at the time. The commission to decorate the ceiling of the famous Mille-Colonnes Café made Magaud a renowned painter. On that ceiling, now lost, were depicted The Triumph of Amphitrite and The Education of Bacchus. He painted France offering crowns to the men who had illustrated her in 1853 for the Café de France located on the Canebière. In 1858, he composed Marseille receiving products from the various nations of the globe and offering his in exchange for the Café des Deux Mondes and, in 1860, Cybele on a chariot drawn by lions for the Grand Hôtel. All of these works have disappeared.

The Jesuits who run the Religious Circle commissioned Magaud to decorate the large meeting hall of their circle. This Religious Circle, located at 7 Rue de la Mission-de-France, occupied the former premises created in 1643 by the priests of the Congregation of Saint Vincent de Paul known as the Missionaries of France. These religious men were chaplains of the galleys and took care of redeeming captives. After a lease to the Clarisses, these premises were occupied by the Jesuits who commissioned architect Pascal Coste to build a chapel and a meeting hall (26 × 8.50 m), known as the historical gallery. This meeting hall was decorated with fifteen large canvases by Magaud, produced from 1856 to 1864, depicting the civilizing role of Catholicism. The viewing of this cycle of painting was to be done from a large ceiling-marouflé canvas, now missing, representing the Virgin in the heavens surrounded by angels.

Magaud later received a major commission from Prefect Maupas for the decoration of the Bouches-du-Rhône prefecture under construction. From 1865 to 1873, he designed eight allegorical ceilings and thirty-two various subjects in private apartments. In 1866, the Chamber of Commerce commissioned him to decorate the ceiling of the Palace of the Bourse; this painting, destroyed during the city’s bombardments in August 1944 for its liberation, depicted The Apotheosis of the Great Men of Provence.

In 1869, he became director of the School of Fine Arts of Marseille and gave it a new impetus. From 1873, the year the Bourse Palace decoration was completed, he devoted almost entirely to directing the school. During his twenty-seven years at the helm, the number of professors rose from three at his arrival to eighteen at his departure. He trained many artists including Jean-Baptiste Olive. Among the students, two painters and five sculptors won a Prix de Rome. In 1894 he decorated the school of fine arts’ auditorium, then located in the Palace of the Arts.

On April 19, 1866, he was named a member of the Académie de Marseille. His bust, sculpted by Émile Aldebert, is kept in the hall of the music conservatory at the Palace of the Arts in Marseille.

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