In the history of art, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps is one of the names that keeps being returned to.
The record lists Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps as French painter (1803–1860).
Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps was born at Paris in 1803. His recorded nationality is France.
The nineteenth century broke the academy's authority: independent exhibitions, dealers and the beginnings of modernism.
He worked as painter, lithographer and printmaker.
His recorded movement is romanticism and orientalism.
Among his best-known works are Searching for Truffles and Christ on trial. Looking is a skill, and the artists who last are those who taught their audience how to do it.
Recognition followed: Knight of the Legion of Honour (1839).
That the work was made in France shaped it: artistic traditions, academies and the galleries that decide what is seen have never been evenly distributed.
Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps died in 1860, aged 57. The work remains, hanging in collections that outlived both the artist and the market that first priced it.
Achievements
- Knight of the Legion of Honour — 1839
- Notable work: Searching for Truffles
- Notable work: Christ on trial
- Movement: Romanticism and Orientalism
