Eugene Burnand

Eugène Burnand (1850-1921)was born on August 30, 1850 in Moudon, Canton de Vaud, Switzerland. He studied painting at l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva with Barthélémy Menn, a realist master. In 1872 he moved to Paris to join the studio of landscape painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Though known as a realist and drawn to the new art of photography, his paintings were far more than naturalist reproductions of people and scenes. A major influence was Jean-Francois Millet, who painted simple people in postures of prayer or gleaning the fields as in biblical times. Interestingly Millet had a great influence on Van Gogh, who often wrote about him in his diaries. Burnand is often compared and contrasted with Ferdinand Hodler, the realist artist from Berne, Switzerland, who was equally religious, but decidedly more expressionistic than Burnand, whose background was Calvinist. Burnand thought the emerging positivist philosophy of his day could provide him a greater sense of immediacy. There was considerable demand for large-scale religious paintings at the turn of the century, with America providing a solid market. After a good fifty years of a productive life Burnand died on 4 February 1921 in Paris, a little over 70 years old.