Georges Paul François Laurent Laugée
Georges Paul François Laurent Laugée was born on 19 December 1853, the third of five children, in Montivilliers, a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Haute-Normandie region in northern France just to the northeast of Le Havre.
The elder Laugée was raised in Saint-Quentin, in the Picardy region of France, where he received his early training in visual arts with Louis Nicolas Lemasle (1788-1870), a pupil of Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825).
For these painters, realism meant finding reality in ordinary life, such as country scenes or peasants, and in particular, seeking its essence.
This lesson was learned by the Impressionists, who took it a step further, and experimented with the play of light and color in outdoor settings, where they painted directly from life.
Digesting these currents, Laugée and Dupré were able to meld their formal academic training and its realist emphasis with Impressionist-inspired handling of light and brush, as well as something of the direct, serious, and heartfelt intensity of the Pre-Raphaelites.
Like many of his French naturalist colleagues, Laugée's focus was primarily on rural life−whether domestic scenes of beautiful young peasant mothers or grittier images of farm workers dragging themselves home at the end of a day of back-breaking labor.
"[5] Some Naturalist painters, such as Jules-Alexis Muenier (1863-1942), leaned more in the direction of photo-realism, akin to the Pre-Raphaelites, even to the point of utilizing photography to help with composition.
Since Laugée shared similar artistic ideas and sensibilities with his now brother-in-law, the two remained close friends until Dupré's death in 1910.
Laugée made his debut at the Paris Salon of 1877 with painting 1226, Le repas de moissonneurs (The Meal of the Harvesters).
He exhibited there on a regular basis, and in 1881 received bronze medals for his paintings En Octobre (In October) and Pauvre aveugle (Poor Beggar Woman).
One of his 1891 Salon entries, Au printemps de la vie (In the Springtime of Life), which won a medal, was chosen for exhibition at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, forming part of the French art shown there (see image right side).
The painting clearly shows the melding of Impressionism with the intensity of the Pre-Raphaelites, not unlike what was done by other painters around the same time, such as John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) and Arthur Hughes (1832-1915, see his April Love[8]).
William Walton's guide to the art and architecture in the Exposition discusses Laugée's painting and observes its naturalist authenticity: "More of these humble folk, artfully arranged but with very little artificial glossing over of their awkward rusticity, may be seen in George (sic) Laugée's "In the Spring-time of Life", a very upright and much embarrassed pair facing each other in a pleasantly illuminated bit of greenery.
Bastien-Lepage was one of the first to render this subtle charm of the tender passion burning sweetly through an uncouth exterior, like the flame of a horn lantern, as it were."
Images of Laugée's works began to appear in various publications, including Famous Paintings of the World (1894),[9] which was an early type of introductory art history text.
"It is a simple story the artist has chosen to tell; but he has set it in a scene of tender and idyllic beauty, thoroughly appropriate to the gentle theme of affection he has selected for the central thought."
A 1906 auction catalog published by the American Art Association features an illustration of Laugée's painting Coming Through the Rye (À travers le seigle).
She explained her goals in selecting this type of illustration: "the artist, like the poet, perceives a delicate meaning in the humblest scenes which may surround him.
After World War I, with its large-scale mechanized destruction, all aspects of the environment in France changed quite drastically, especially with respect to culture.
