Léon Riesener

Léon Riesener
Portrait of Léon Riesener by his cousin Eugène Delacroix (1835)
Born	21 January 1808 Paris
Died	25 May 1878 Paris
Nationality	French
Education	Studios of Henri-François Riesener and Antoine-Jean Gros
Known for	Painting
Movement	Romanticism
Awards	Légion d'honneur

Louis Antoine Léon Riesener (21 January 1808 in Paris – 25 May 1878 in Paris) was a French Romantic painter.

Enchanted by the play of light and reflections which transformed the appearance of matter, Riesener began a new aesthetic that made him one of the precursors of impressionism. A passionate colourist, he researched all the nuances of colour and studied the techniques of ancient Greece and the Renaissance, including Titian, Veronese and Corregio. Impressed by his research into colour, he turned towards Rubens, which for him was the Shakespeare of painting. Very early in his career Riesener studied tonal divisions, well before the physician Chevreul discovered their scientific basis. His tactile taste led him to look for the most perfect expression of matter and particularly of skin. He put poetry into his painting by the play of shadow and he passionately admired nature, life and all the beauties they produced.

He researched the subject of life in the countryside and, liking to paint reality, said he wanted to express "the heat of the day, the melancholy of the evening, meadows, flowers as they are in nature". His study of the elements caused him to paint a series of skies which varied according to the light and time of day – the subjects were ahead of their time and Riesener had to fight hard against the Salon juries and the Institut. Using pure colours, he excluded the blacks and whites which had been used for shadows and light before him. His material science of colour was the opposition which gave birth to contrasts from juxtaposed pigments. He did not portray faces by contours, but by shadows and modelling.

Riesener came from an artistic family – his father Henri-François Riesener was also a painter, whilst his paternal grandfather Jean Henri Riesener was a noted German-born cabinet-maker. Léon had his first artistic training from his father while still a child and, on leaving collège, his father gained him a position in Antoine-Jean Gros's studio. Passionate about beauty and researching new techniques in colour, Riesener struggled against the prevailing taste of his time from his youth onwards.