Octave Tassaert: painter of poverty, tragedy and oblivion. His paintings are full of pain, but the world did not understand them.

His paintings made viewers swoon, but he was not accepted by critics. His life was full of suffering, and his death became a mirror of his work. Why has the artist who foreshadowed social realism been forgotten, and what is known today about his lost works?

Self-portrait holding a brush and palette

Nicolas François Octave Tassaert was born in 1800 in Paris to a family of Flemish artists. He learned his first skills in painting from his father, Jean-Joseph-François Tassaert, and then studied under his older brother, who was involved in the art trade. His artistic education later continued under François Girard at the École des Beaux-Arts.

Artist's Workshop. 1845

Despite certain acclaim, Tassaert did not achieve high-profile success, largely because of his interest in the lives of ordinary people, which did not endear him to critics. In the 1850s, however, his paintings depicting poverty and suffering - sick mothers, unhappy children, and abandoned wives - captured the public's attention. Tassaert's works, marked by strong emotionality, earned him the nicknames “Proudhon of the Poor” and “Correggio of the Attic.” However, many viewers considered his paintings overly sentimental and unsuitable for exhibitions dominated by ceremonial portraits and battle scenes.

Abandoned girl

Over time, public misunderstanding only increased, leading the artist to become disillusioned with the art world. Despite being recognized at the 1855 World's Fair, Tassaertbecame increasingly alienated from official art circles. After participating in the Salon of 1857, he finally abandoned exhibitions.

Children in the snow

By the early 1860s, the artist fell into depression and began to abuse alcohol. In 1863, he decided to sell his remaining works to the then famous art dealer Peru Martin, who was called “Papa Martin”, and completely stopped painting. In an attempt to change the field of activity, he took up poetry, but his poems met with a cold reception. Disillusioned, Tassaert burned his manuscripts, and eventually only a few fragments of his literary work have survived.

Unhappy Family, also known as Suicide. 1852

His life was full of dramatic episodes. There were rumors that allegedly in his youth he was in love with the daughter of a wealthy merchant, but her family considered the artist unsuitable party. After this disappointment on his canvases more and more often appeared images of suffering and loss. One of his paintings, depicting a woman dying in poverty, made such a strong impression on visitors to the Salon that one of the ladies fainted. Contemporaries referred to his works as “pictorial chronicles of agony”.

Heaven and hell

Tassaert's work was also influenced by the social upheavals of the time. Paris in the mid-19th century was experiencing serious social changes: poverty, revolutions, reforms. These events contributed to the emergence of realism as an artistic movement, and Tassaert, although he remained in the shadow of the great masters, belonged to those who sought to truthfully portray the lives of ordinary people. In contrast to the academicians, glorifying heroism, and the Romantics, inclined to idealism, he, like Gustave Courbet, preferred to honestly depict the harsh reality of the time.

The Damned Sinner (French: La Femme Damnée). Private collection

Subsequently, his work began to be reinterpreted. Realist painters and advocates of social art began to see him as a forerunner of a movement that addressed important social issues. Some scholars suggest that Tassaert's influence was even reflected in the works of Vincent van Gogh, who also focused on the theme of human suffering.

Lying nymph

In 1865, Tassaert unsuccessfully tried to treat in Montpellier, but there was no improvement. Toward the end of his life, he found himself all alone: blinded, impoverished, consigned to oblivion. In 1874, at the age of 73, he committed suicide, choosing the same method as the heroine of his painting “Suicide” - burned himself with a coal stove in a locked room. His body was discovered a few days later, with one of his old paintings depicting the tragic death scene lying next to him.

Susanna and the elders

It was not until years later that art historians began to re-examine his oeuvre. Today, Tassaert's works are found in private collections and rare museum collections, and researchers continue to search for lost canvases and manuscripts in an effort to restore his place in art history.

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