Eugène Lavieille

Eugène Lavieille soon devoted himself solely to painting despite financial difficulties and becoming a family man, marrying his first wife in 1847 (she died in 1848 soon after the birth of their son Adrien) and his second in 1852.

Frequent subjects of his paintings included trees, forests, fields, pools, farms, hamlet streets, riversides, ships on the strand and the flat coasts around Berck and some sites such as the château de Pierrefonds (Oise), or La Ferté-Milon.

He evoked the quotidian life in the country, peasants in the fields, or conducting droves, cows grazing or crossing a ford, hinds or roe-deers in the woods.

Later, he painted in La Ferté-Milon, and its surroundings, where he lived from 1856 to 1859 (and where he returned), Ville d'Avray, in the Perche in Normandy, on the Basque coast, in Seine-et-Marne near Moret-sur-Loing and at the end of his life in Courpalay.

He had narrow contacts with the painters of his time : aside from Corot, with Millet, Rousseau, Daubigny, Diaz de la Pena, Troyon, Dupré, Ziem, Chintreuil, Léon Brunel-Rocque, Frédéric Henriet, Daumier, but also with the photographers Nadar and Carjat, who both realized a portrait of him, the man of letters Charles Asselineau… His first participation to the Salon was in 1844.