Ravier drawing

FRANÇOIS-AUGUSTE RAVIER                   Lyon 1814  -  1895 Morestel near Lyon

Wooded Landscape.

Watercolor with scratching. Signed by the artist lower right.

Ravier studed with Leon Coignet and then Theodore Caruelle D’Aligny.  In the 1840s he traveled to Rome where he painted landscapes in the manner of Corot.

He returned to Lyon for good by the early 1850s where he concentrated on landscape. Although he lived near Lyon he exhibited in Paris with considerable success, even if he  avoided submitting his work to the Salon until 1884, the year he went blind in one eye. He exhibited in the Salon until 1886; in 1889 he went completely blind.

His watercolors in his earlier phase were much in the tradition of Barbizon painting, but in later years his watercolors and gouaches became deeply atmospheric; he often depicted landscapes at dawn or dusk, and as is the case with our watercolor, created striking effects by scratching or abrading areas of color, and by combining broad areas of color with forms articulated only with jagged lines of black pen.

205 x 286 mm.    8 1/8 x 11 ¼ inches