He exhibited flowers at the Salon from 1840, at sixteen. The work of Jules Dupré turned him towards landscape: he did not leave the flowers, he took them outdoors, spending his summers at Parmain, where Daubigny and Corot worked. A bronze statue titled Bouquet serves as his monument.
The story
Born in Paris on 18 April 1824, Louis Lemaire began with flowers, a genre much in demand and little respected, and made his Salon debut in 1849, at twenty-five.
A pupil of Auguste Boulard and then of Jules Dupré, one of the masters of Barbizon, he turned to landscape. He did not give up flowers; he took them outdoors.
He spent his summers at Parmain, in the Oise valley, where Daubigny was drifting down the river and Corot setting up his easel: the laboratory of French landscape painting.
He showed at the Salon for sixty years, from 1849 to 1909: his last canvas hung there the year before he died.
He died in Paris in March 1910, at eighty-five, and lies in Division 1, avenue Thirion, second row, under a bronze in which a palette and its brushes carry a bouquet. The museum at L'Isle-Adam keeps his Juin aux Arcades, painted in the garden of his country house.
The grave
A bronze statue titled Bouquet tops the grave — a motif of flowers for a painter who began by exhibiting them, at the Salon, from the age of sixteen. The inscription is brief: “Louis LEMAIRE, painter, 1824-1910”. Nothing of his landscapes of the Oise valley, nothing of the museum at L'Isle-Adam that keeps his canvases: the grave retained the genre of his beginnings.
On site, do not miss
The bronze bouquet set on the stone. It is the title of the work and the genre of his beginnings: a flower painter buried beneath flowers of metal.
Visitors' questions
Where is Louis Lemaire's grave?
In Division 1, avenue Thirion, second row, two minutes from the main entrance. You know it by its bronze statue, a bouquet. Admiral Baudin rests one row further along, on the same avenue.
Admiral BaudinWhat did Louis Lemaire paint?
Flowers first, shown at the Salon from 1840, then landscapes: the work of Jules Dupré, one of the masters of Barbizon, turned him towards painting in the open air. He spent his summers at Parmain, in the Oise valley.
Camille CorotWhat does the statue on his grave represent?
A bouquet, cast in bronze, and that is its title: Bouquet. Few graves at Père-Lachaise refer so directly to the genre of the painter they shelter — the sculptor summed up a career in a single motif.
James PradierWhere can Louis Lemaire's works be seen?
At the Musée Louis Senlecq in L'Isle-Adam, in the Val-d'Oise, which holds several. It is the region of his summers, spent at Parmain: the Oise valley, where Daubigny painted from his studio boat and Corot set up his easel.
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