Aimé Nicolas Morot (; 16 June 1850 – 12 August 1913) was a French academic painter and sculptor.
Biography Aimé Nicolas Morot, son of François-Aimé Morot and Catherine-Elisabeth Mansuy, was born in Rue d'Amerval 4 in Nancy on 16 June 1850,E. Benezit, 1976. Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs. Volume 7, p. 553. Librairie Gründ. Paris, France. . and spent his youth in Rue de la Colline in Boudonville.Anonymous, 24 August 1913. La Famille Morot. L'Immeuble et la Construction dans l'Est, p. 325 At age 12 he started his studies in drawing, painting and gravure printing at the l'Ecole Municipal de Dessin et de Peinture de Nancy under ThiéryAimé Nicolas Morot and Charles Moreau-Vauthier, 1906. L'oeuvre de Aimé Morot: membre de l'Académie des Beaux-Arts. Librairie Hachette et Cie., Paris. 7 p., 60 gravures, in folio.M. S. (1907). L'oeuvre de Aimé Morot (Ch. Moreau-Vauthier). Gazette des Beaux-Arts. 49e Année, 595e Livraison, 3e Periode. Tome XXXVII, p. 87-88. January issue, Paris. and the director of the school Charles Sellier.H. Vollmer, B.C. Kreplin, L. Scheewe, H. Wolff and O. Kellner, 1931. Allgemeines Lexicon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Moehring – Olivié 25th Edition (in German), Publ. Verlag von E.A. Seemann, Leipzig, Germany. He continued his studies in Nancy until the late 1860s and subsequently attended the workshop of Alexandre Cabanel at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris,Dupont Vicars (Ed.), 1901. Master Painting's of the World. The White City Art Co. (Publ.), Chicago, Ill. 192 p. but could not study well in the noisy environment of Cabanel's workshop and left after having received two corrections by Cabanel. In the next two years he continued his studies independently studying in the Jardin des Plantes, where he developed his skills in observing and portraying animals. Despite his lack of attendance at the École, he won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1873 with his first submission, the Babylonian Captivity (Super Flumina Babylonis),T. Child, 1890. French painters, some modern. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, December 1889 – May 1890. New York, LXXX(480):817-842. which is currently in the collection of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
The fellowship allowed him to travel to Italy and become a resident of the Villa Medici, where the French Academy in Rome was housed. Morot rarely set foot in his workshop in the Villa Medici, but still regularly produced paintings. His first submission to the Salon de Paris was awarded a third-class medal for the painting Spring (Printemps) in 1876. In 1877 he was awarded a second-class medal for Médée, for which a Roman woman called Victoria served as his model. He subsequently received a first-class medal in 1879 for Les Ambronnes and the Medal of Honour for The Good Samaritan in 1880, competing against Joan of Arc by the realist painter Jules Bastien-Lepage, who had also studied under Cabanel. According to Brauer (2013)Fae Brauer, 2013. Rivals and Conspirators: The Paris Salons and the Modern Art Centre. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 457 p. The Good Samaritan was a protest against the continued poor treatment of the Paris Communards after their defeat in 1871.
Morot returned to Paris in 1880, where he met painter Jean-Léon Gérôme and married Suzanne-Mélanie Gérôme (1867–1941), one of the painter's four daughters, at the Mairie Drouot (Paris 9eme Arrondissement, civil) and in the Sainte-Trinité church in 1887. Marriage witnesses included fellow painters Fernand Cormon and Charles Jalabert.
The family first lived in 18 rue de Chabrol, and in 1896 moved to a town house at 11 rue Weber, in Paris, the garden of which resembled a zoo housing snakes,J. Dubern (Ed.), 1895. Variété. La passion des bêtes. Le Messager de l'Ouest: journal de l'arrondissement de Sidi-Bel-Abbès. 24 September, Année 2 — N° 166. lions, panthers, leopards and other exotic animals.J. Tharaud and J. Tharaud, 1913. Aimé Morot, l'ami des bêtes. Journal de Monaco 2896. 16 September, p. 1-2.L. Thornton (1990). Les Africanistes, peintres voyageurs: 1860–1960. Art Creation Realisation International Edition, Paris, France. 336 p. He had two children, a daughter Aimée Morot (1901–1958) and a son Jean-Léon Morot (1908–1961). Suzanne-Mélanie Morot modelled for paintings in 1897 and, together with her daughter, in 1904. One of Morot's last contributions to the French Artists' Salon de Paris was a painting of his children called Brother and Sister (Frere et Soeur) in 1911.
In the 1880s, Morot worked at the Académie Julian, where he was a colleague of William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) with whom he co-supervised the British cartoonist and illustrator Sir Leonard Raven-Hill (1867–1935) in 1885 and 1886. After Gustave Moreau's death in 1898, he led Moreau's studio at the institute. Theodor Pallady (1871–1956) and Gaston Hippolyte Ambroise Boucart (fr) (1878–1962), former pupils of Gustave Moreau, continued their studies under Aimé Morot. Charles Louis Auguste Weisser (Montbéliard, 1864–1940) was a student of both Aimé Morot and Jean-Léon Gérôme.E. Benezit, 1976. Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs. Volume 10, p. 682. Librairie Gründ. Paris, France. . Other French painters and engravers that were supervised by Morot were Hippolyte-Auguste Fauchon, (1853–1935), (1861–1943), Léon Fauché (1868–1951), (1879–1932) and Henry Jacquier (1878–1921).
In 1900, he won the grand prix of the l'Exposition Universelle (Paris Exhibition) and in the same year became professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Henry Golden Dearth (Bristol, 1864), a bronze medal winner at the same Paris Exhibition of 1900, was one of his British students, as were Dawson Dawson-Watson (1864–1939) and James Whitelaw Hamilton (1860–1932).
His American apprentice artists included Benjamin Foster (1852–1926), Edmund Clarence Messer (1842–1919; elected Principal of Corcoran School of Art in 1902), Gaylord Sangston Truesdell (1850–1899), George Henry Bogert (1864–1944), Georgia Timken Fry (1864–1921), Eurilda Loomis France (1865–1931) and Herbert Haseltine (1877–1962).
In 1883 Morot was awarded the title of Chevalier (knight) in the Legion of Honour and in 1901 he became Officier (officer) in the Légion d'Honneur. As an academician and professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts who frequently exhibited at the French Artists' Salon in Paris and being a member of the painting jury, Aimé Morot was an influential person in the modern art centre of Paris, being among the 18 most influential members of the InstituteBureau du Livre d'Or des Peintres, 1906. Le livre d'Or des Peintres Exposants 1903–1905. 3rd edition, Paris, 653 p. and was included in Grün's painting "One Friday at the French Artists' Salon" in 1911.F. Brauer, 2013. Rivals and Conspirators. The Paris Salons and the Modern Art Centre. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. In 1912 he was awarded the distinction of Commandeur in the Légion d'Honneur. Morot contributed to the Salon until 1913 where he exposed a portrait of M. Paul Deschanel.Anonymous, 3 May 1913. Les Salons de 1913. L'Illustration 3662. Paris, France
In 1910, Morot ordered the construction of a second house outside Paris, Maison dite Ker Arlette in Dinard, a coastal village in North-east Brittany. He lived there until his death after a lengthy illness on 12 August 1913. His death mask was cast in bronze using Lost-wax casting by Fonderie Valsuani, with which he had collaborated for casting bronzes (e.g. Baigneuse debout, Torse de femme). Obituaries were published in the 13 August 1913 edition of Gil Blas,L. Vauxcelles, 1913. Les Arts, Aimé Morot. Gil Blas No. 13323 the 16 August 1913 edition of L'Illustration and the 24 August edition of L'Immeuble & la Construction dans l'Est.
Aimé Morot's brother was a well-known designer and locksmith in Nancy, who worked on the restoration of the 18th century gilded wrought-iron gates on Place Stanislas in Nancy, designed by Jean Lamour. His brother may have been the inspiration for his painting of The Blacksmith (Le Forgeron). His nephew Jacques Morot also became a painter and exhibited three paintings (portrait of an Arab Chleuch au chapelet, Despedida (l'adieu) and Château du Metz) in the Salon in 1922.C. Morro, 1922. Beaux Arts, Artistes vus aux récents Salons. La Revue moderne des arts et de la vie. C-E. Curinier (Dir.). 22e année, no. 7., p.23.
Military genre, battle scenes
Morot had been attached to the General Staff of the French Army, which had given him ample opportunity to study cavalry men and horses. To study the movement of the horses he used his eye as a camera by the use of a simple device that he could open and close rapidly in front of his eyes to better isolate the movements. This allowed him to vividly paint several historic cavalry charges from the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Among the paintings exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français were Cavalry charge at Rezonville (1886), 3ème Cuirassiers a Helsass Hausen (1887) and Reischoffen (1887, exhibited in Musée de l'Histoire de France (Versailles)) and Prisonnier! or the Charge of cavalry at Gravelotte (1888).
Society portraits
After producing a number of classical and figure paintings at the beginning of his career (e.g. Hériodiade (1880), Le Bon Samaritain (1880), Jésus de Nazareth (1883), Temptation of St. Anthony, Dryade (1884)) he went on to become a society portraitist. Among others he painted Madame Bertinot (1880), Madame Agache (1881), Comtesse de Fontarce (1885), Son Altesse Royale la Duchesse d'Alençon Duchess Sophie Charlotte in Bavaria, Madame Archdeacon-Boisseaux (1895), Madame Méring (1895), Baron Alphonse James de Rothschild (1898), the most famous French socialite of the Belle Epoque Countess Élisabeth Greffulhe,Laure Hillerin, 2014. La Comtesse Greffulhe, l'Ombre des Guermantes, Flammarion, Paris – France. 576 p. the painter Édouard Detaille (1899), Monsieur Gustave Eiffel (1905), the Duc de Doudeauville, Madame Aymé Darblay (1902), Pastor Goulden (1906), and Frère et Soeur (Brother and sister), which was exhibited at the Salon de Paris in 1911.
Paintings of animals Morot excelled in portraying animals, which appeared in many of his other paintings, such as the horses in his historic cavalry paintings, a donkey in Le bon Samaritain, a pig in Temptation of Saint Anthony, a snake in La Charmeuse, lions in Lion before his Prey and Reclining Lions, Rex and Au Tableau, tigers in Tigre and Deux Tigres Combattant, dogs in Mademoiselle Brice and Jacques Goldschmid and a cat in the painting of his daughter Denise with Cat (1899).
International travel
His visits to Spain inspired him to Spanish motifs, such as the paintings of Toro Colante displayed at the Salon de Paris in 1885 and of which gravures were published in Le Monde Illustré in 1887 and El Bravo Toro!. which was exhibited in the Salon in 1884 and later featured on the cover of Les Annales politiques et littéraires after his death in 1913. These paintings were painted from memory after Morot had visited a series of bull fights in Spain.