Continental European after 1800 10 comments Is the artist Eugène Jean-Marie Bergeron? What are his dates?
© the copyright holder. Photo credit: University of Hull Art Collection
I think the artist is Eugène Jean-Marie Bergeron, whose works are on various auction sites with that name and the same signature.
https://tinyurl.com/ye25upv6
https://tinyurl.com/4r62vrv4
However, some sites have his death as 1996, some as 1896. One seems to say his birth was 1896. The Bibliothèque nationale de France suggests his dates were 1860–1896: https://tinyurl.com/yc86uft6
It is not clear that the person listed by the BnF as ‘archaeologist and painter’ was the man who painted this work on Art UK as well as the other works shown online under the same artist name. Some look very modern, more 20th C than 19th, so perhaps there were two men called Eugène Bergeron, both of whom painted.
I can't find anything immediately on Ancestry or the BNA to confirm his identity, but there may be records.
Andrew Shore, Entry reviewed by Art UK
10 comments
Benezit has Eugène Jean-Marie Bergeron as 19th C, d. 1896.
Surely two different artists. The surname went with the Huguenot exodus from France to USA and Canada and is listed in the (US) National Huguenot Society's register.
If there are two Eugène Bergeron's it is possible that only one is French.
A quick look online shows that the still lives, the pin-ups and the 19th century looking landscapes seem to have identical signatures. See attachment. They must therefore all be by the same 'person' and may date from around the 1960s, as the Hull cataloguer astutely recognises.
The nature of the signatures suggests to me they may all be the product of a mass production facility. Many of these, producing fake period pictures, with fake labels and cheap period style frames are familiar in local auctions and dealers. It would be good to see the back of some of these paintings.
All we know of the name is 'E. Bergeron'. It is a common surname. There may well have been an artist "Eugène Jean Marie French , 19th century, male. Died 1896. Painter. A member of the Société des Artistes Français; participated in Society exhibitions in Paris" as Benezit states, but the modern and consistent signatures here show this is not our man.
The signature looks vaguely artificial, as if produced via a stencil.
There is nothing relevant by a Bergeron or by Eugène Jean-Marie Bergeron in the Joconde database for French public art collections.
The French artist was indeed born in 1860, in Paris. His name was Marie Jean Eugène Bergeron. He married in 1888.
According to this catalogue from the 1885 Paris Salon, Bergeron was born in Paris and he was a pupil of "M. E. Bourgeois".
https://tinyurl.com/36jsrsww
Mr. Bourgeois was likely Eugène Victoire Bourgeois (1855-1909).
https://tinyurl.com/2uzuyzh6
Here are some of the works of Mr. Bourgeois.
https://tinyurl.com/3h8a5ztp
https://tinyurl.com/2nkcs3em
The dates 1860-1896 for the French 'archaeologist and painter' seem reasonable.
I think the pin-up work gives the game away (though the still lives do not look 19th century, either). Looks like commercial work, at least some of it apparently deliberately deceptive.
One of the landscapes on Invaluable (sold in Chicago in 2005) is a truncated, but still close variant of Hull's painting. The canvas size is about the same, too, but rotated through 90 degrees. See attached.
A pair of pictures by the same artist was sold at Bonhams.
https://www.bonhams.com/auction/19018/lot/920/continental-school-20th-century-marais-en-sologne-a-tranquil-canal-and-another-similar-a-pair/
with the in description:
"both signed 'E Bergeron'; both signed and inscribed verso and both bear inscriptions 'Etienne Bergeron' verso oil on canvas".
They did not however give the name "Etienne Bergeron" enough credence to attribute them more exactly than to "Continental. School, (20th century)"
The E. Bergeron still lifes look especially commercial, and they would appear to be by a different hand compared to the landscapes.