Champfleury

For other uses, see Champfleury (disambiguation).

Champfleury
Champfleury circa 1860, photographed by Nadar
Born	Jules François Felix Fleury-Husson (1821-06-17)June 17, 1821 Laon, Aisne, France
Died	Sèvres, France
Nationality	France
Occupation	Art critic, novelist

Jules François Felix Fleury-Husson (17 September 1821 – 6 December 1889), who wrote under the name Champfleury, was a French art critic and novelist, a prominent supporter of the Realist movement in painting and fiction.

Biography

Champfleury was born at Laon, Aisne. In 1843 he moved to Paris and met Charles Baudelaire. The next year he started writing art criticism under the pen-name "Champfleury" for the journal L'Artiste. He was one of the first to promote the work of Gustave Courbet, in an article appearing in an issue of Le Pamphlet in 1848.

In 1850, during a time when the Spanish school was still largely ignored, he advocated the work of El Greco. He wrote about the Le Nain brothers and Maurice Quentin de La Tour. He also had a brief affair in 1851 with Eveline Hańska, the widow of his friend Honoré de Balzac. He edited the periodical Le réalisme in 1856 and 1857. His novels, of which the best-known is Les bourgeois de Molinchart (1854), were among the earliest Realist works.

In 1869 his book Les Chats, a series of essays about cats including portrayals of cats by prominent artists of the time, was published by Librairie de la Société Botanique de France, edited by J. Rothschild. From 1872 until his death in 1889 he was Chief of Collections at the Sèvres porcelain factory.

The character of Marcel in Henri Murger's Scènes de la vie de bohème, and thus the corresponding character Marcello in Puccini's opera based on it, was partially based on Champfleury. Champfleury was a friend of Murger and they had roomed together for a time.

He died in Sèvres.

Works

Novels

• Chien-Caillou: Fantaisies d'hiver (1847)
• Pauvre Trompette: Fantaisies de printemps (1847)
• Feu Miette: Fantaisies d'été (1847)
• Confessions de Sylvius (1849)
• Les Aventures de Mademoiselle Mariette (1853)
• Les Oies de Noël (1852; reprinted in 1858 as L'Usurier Blaizot)
• Les Souffrances du Professeur Delteil (1853)
• Les Bourgeois de Molinchart (1855)
• La Succession Le Camus (1858)
• Le Violon de Faïence (1862)
• La Comédie Académique: La Belle Paule (1867)
• M. Tringle (1868; illustrated by Léonce Petit)

Criticism

• Essai sur les Lenain (1850)
• Les Excentriques (1852)
• Du Réalisme. Lettre à Madame Sand (1855)
• Le Réalisme (1857)
• Souvenirs des Funambules (1859)
• Richard Wagner (1860)
• Chansons Populaires des Provinces de France (1860)
• De la Littérature Populaire en France (1861)
• Nouvelles Recherches sur la Vie et l'Œuvre des Frères Le Nain (1862)
• Histoire des Faïences Patriotiques sous la Révolution (1867)
• Histoire de la Caricature Antique (1865; 1867, 1879, 1880)
• Histoire de la Caricature au Moyen Âge et sous la Renaissance (1872; 1876)
• Histoire de la Caricature sous la Réforme et la Ligue. Louis XIII à Louis XVI (1880)
• Histoire de la Caricature sous la République, l'Empire et la Restauration (1874; 1877)
• Histoire de la Caricature Moderne (1865; 1872, 1885)
• Le Musée Secret de la Caricature (1888)
• Histoire de l'Imagerie Populaire (1869)
• Souvenirs et Portraits de Jeunesse (1872)
• Documents pour servir à la Biographie de Balzac (1875)
• Henry Monnier: Sa Vie Son Œuvre (1879)
• Balzac au Collége (1878)
• Les Vignettes Romantiques: Histoire de la Littérature et de l’Art, 1825-1840 (1883)

External links

• Works by Jules Champfleury at Hathi Trust
• Works by Jules Champfleury at Project Gutenberg