Antoine Chazal

Biography of Antoine Chazal ( 1793-1854 )

A student of the painters and engravers Sébastien-Joseph Misbach, Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld and Gérard van Spaendonck, Antoine Chazal was not only a painter of flowers and fruits, but also a portraitist sensitive to the lesson of Ingres, a draughtsman, a scientific illustrator, a miniaturist and an animal artist. He also produced religious paintings.

Antoine Chazal sent numerous compositions in these different genres to the Salon from 1822 to 1853. Extremely meticulous in his work, he drew up a Notice de mes travaux, summarizing his painted, drawn and engraved works from 1815 to 1854. The work includes 124 paintings today not located, and 333 drawings almost all unknown.
In 1830, Chazal painted a large canvas entitled "Hommage à Gérard Van Spaendonck", which was awarded a second class medal at the 1831 Salon and is now kept in the Roubaix Museum. It is a perfect illustration of the close ties between Dutch and French still life painters.

His perfect technical mastery of watercolor, oil and vellum painting allowed him to compete for the title of vellum painter at the Natural History Museum in Paris. Professor of animal iconography, Chazal also drew for several medical treatises. For 25 years, his anatomy plates were engraved on copper or lithographed and illustrated the most famous works of his time.

He was named Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1838. In addition to exhibiting in Paris, Antoine Chazal also participated in the Salons in Lyon and Marseille. He designed shawls painted with flowers in the Dutch style and became a rival of Simon Saint-Jean in this discipline. In the 1840s, Chazal is considered one of the best painters of flowers. His most famous work, the Yucca gloriosa, an oil on canvas of 1845, is kept in the Louvre Museum.