Thomas Couture
Date of birth: 21 December 1815
Place of birth: Senlis, Oise, France
Date of death: 30 March 1879
Place of death: Villiers-le-Bel, France
Category: painter
Identity:
Couture was an influential painter of historical and genre subjects, and a teacher.
Life:
Hie most famous work, Les Romains de la décadence (1847), is in the Musée d'Orsay. He taught such artists as Henri Fantin-Latour and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. As a young art student, Whistler painted a Copy after a Group in Couture's 'Romains de la décadence' y018.
In 1867 Couture published a book on his own ideas and working methods called Méthode et entretiens d'atelier (Method and workshop interviews). It was translated as Conversations on Art Methods in 1879.
Bibliography:
Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th Edition, 1911; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 .
