The Deaths of Henri Regnault

This is the first book in English on Henri Regnault (1843–71), a forgotten star of the European fin-de-siecle. A brilliant maverick who once seemed to hold the future of French painting in his hands, Regnault’s meteoric rise was cut short when he died at the age of twenty-seven in the Franco-Prussian War. The story of his glamorous career and patriotic death colored French commemorative culture for nearly forty years—until his memory was swept away by the vast losses of World War I. InThe Deaths of Henri Regnault, Marc Gotlieb reintroduces this important artist while offering a new perspective on the ultimate decline of nineteenth-century salon painting.

Gotlieb traces Regnault’s trajectory after he won the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome, a fellowship that provided four years of study in Italy. Once there, Regnault suffered a crisis of originality that led him to flee to Spain and North Africa. On his return to Paris, he enthralled audiences with a bold suite of strange, seductive, and violent Orientalist paintings inspired by his North African journeys—images that, Gotlieb argues, also arose from the crisis that earlier overtook Regnault and that in key respects would be shared by his more avant-garde counterparts.

Both an in-depth look at Regnault’s violent art and a vibrant essay on historical memory,The Deaths of Henri Regnault lays bare a creative legend who helped shape the collective experience of a generation.

Marc Gotlieb is the Class of 1955 Professor of Art at Williams College and director of the Williams College/Clark Art Institute graduate program in the history of art. He is the author ofThe Plight of Emulation: Ernest Meissonier and French Salon Painting.