Magaud (XIX) - Cascade dans les Alpes

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

By decree of December 29, 1886, Dominique Antoine Magaud was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. A street in the 7th arrondissement of Marseille bears his name. Dominique Magaud is a French painter, born in Marseille on August 4, 1817, and who died in the same city on December 23, 1899. From a bourgeois family, Dominique Antoine Magaud began his career as a sworn appraiser. 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 an assistant to Léon Cogniet. After leaving the École des Beaux-Arts of Paris, he remained in Paris and stayed close to Cogniet’s circle.

Back in Marseille, from 1853 he undertook the decoration of the grand cafés fashionable at that time. The commission to decorate the ceiling of the famous Café des Mille-Colonnes made Magaud a renowned painter. On this ceiling, now vanished, were depicted The Triumph of Amphitrite and The Education of Bacchus. He painted La 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 the products of the various nations of the globe and offering his in exchange for 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 old 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 the redemption of 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 room (26 × 8.50 m) known as the historical gallery. This meeting room was decorated with fifteen large canvases by Magaud, created between 1856 and 1864, representing the civilizing role of Catholicism. The viewing of this cycle of paintings was to take place from a large canvas affixed to the ceiling, today gone, representing the Virgin in the heavens surrounded by angels.

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

In 1869, he became director of the École des Beaux-Arts de Marseille and gave it a new impulse. From 1873, the date of the completion of the decoration of the Palais de la Bourse, he devoted almost entirely to directing the school. During the twenty-seven years of his directorship, 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 banquet hall of the school of fine arts located then at the Palais des Arts.

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

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