Alexandre Cabanel

Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889) was a French academic painter, born in Montpellier. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1840 and won the Prix de Rome in 1845, spending the following years at the Villa Medici. He became one of the most successful artists of the Second Empire, favoured by Napoleon III for history paintings, mythological scenes and portraits. The Fallen Angel (1847) is in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, and The Birth of Venus, shown at the Salon of 1863, is now in the Musée d'Orsay. Other works include The Death of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta (1870), Pandora (1873) and Phaedra (1880). He was elected to the Academy of Fine Arts in 1863, taught at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1864 and sat on the Salon jury many times. He was critical of the Impressionists and their circle. Cabanel died in Paris in January 1889.