Emile René Ménard

Born to a family of distinguished artist intellectuals, Émile-René Ménard trained under the academic painter Paul Baudry (1828–1886) and studied at the Académie Julian in his native Paris. His lyrical landscape paintings, populated by timeless nudes or classical or mythological figures, reflect the early influence of Camille Corot (1796–1875), a friend of Ménard’s father. The younger Ménard first exhibited at the Salon of 1883 but became associated with the anti-academic Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, founded as a rival exhibition society to the officially organized Salon. In addition, Ménard was a member of an informal anti-Impressionist group, known as la bande noire, surrounding the painter Charles Cottet (1863–1925), a protégé of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898). Rejecting the Impressionists’ contemporary subject matter and their focus on ephemeral phenomena, Cottet and his circle privileged the moral content of a work of art.