Jacques-Émile Blanche (French: [blɑ̃ʃ]; (1 January 1861 – 30 September 1942) was a French artist, largely self-taught, who became a successful portrait painter, working in London and Paris.
Early life
Blanche was born in the 16th arrondissement of Paris on January 1, 1861 and received his education at the prestigious Lycée Condorcet. His father, whose name he shared, was a successful psychiatrist who ran a fashionable clinic on the heights of Montmartre, and he was brought up in the rich Parisian neighborhood of Passy in a house that had belonged to the Princesse de Lamballe. As he grew up, he encountered many remarkable artists. His father's drawing room was frequented by many of the Parisian celebrities in literature and the arts — including Jules Michelet, Charles Renouvier, Hector Berlioz, Camille Corot, Louis Français, and numerous others. At Dr. Blanche's house there were regular Saturday meetings devoted either to some artistic performance or to conversation about aesthetic or literary subjects. Some of Berlioz's Les Troyens was first sung by Anne Charton-Demeur for guests of Dr. Blanche.
Career
Although Blanche received some instruction in painting from Henri Gervex and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he may be regarded as self-taught. He became a successful portrait painter, with a style derived from 18th-century English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough as well as Édouard Manet and John Singer Sargent. He worked in London, where he spent time from 1870 and was a member of the New English Art Club (NEAC). In Paris he exhibited at the Salon and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. One of his closest friends was Marcel Proust, who helped edit several of Blanche's publications. He also knew Henry James and is mentioned in Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. In Paris, at the Académie Vitti, he took a portraiture class with Canada’s first female battlefield artist Mary Riter Hamilton.
