Background
Edouard was born on April 25, 1847, in Toulouse, into the family of Jacques Debat-Ponsan and Elisabeth Martel.
Édouard Debat-Ponsan was trained under Alexandre Cabanel at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, at the same time that Jules Bastien-Lepage was training in that studio.
Edouard was born on April 25, 1847, in Toulouse, into the family of Jacques Debat-Ponsan and Elisabeth Martel.
Édouard Debat-Ponsan was trained under Alexandre Cabanel at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, at the same time that Jules Bastien-Lepage was training in that studio. Indeed, Cabanel seems to have taught the majority of the most successful and popular painters of the 1880s.
Debat-Ponsan’s first well-known works were completed around 1870, but most now appear to have been lost. He served in the military during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 - 1871, and was a strong supporter of the Third Republic which succeeded it.
As told in the Old Testament book of Judges, Jephthah swore an oath that, should he succeed against the Ammonites, the first object (possibly animate) to come out of the doors of his house to meet him, when he returned, he would deliver to the Lord as a burnt offering. Unfortunately, the first object to greet him was his only daughter. She pleaded for two months’ stay of execution, during which she went into the mountains to “weep for her virginity”, but on her return was sacrificed as Jephthah had sworn.
In “The Daughter of Jephthah” (1876), Debat-Ponsan broke with tradition in his depiction of this story, and showed the daughter, with various friends and maids, during her stay in the mountains as she ‘wept for her virginity.’ The daughter in question appeared to be the woman at the center, who was looking directly at the viewer with a sultry, almost angry, expression, as her entourage were doing most of the weeping. The following year, Debat-Ponsan was awarded money to travel to Italy, although he did not win the Prix de Rome, where he became inspired to paint portraits.
The next painting is another unusual narrative work: “One Morning in Front of the Louvre Gate” (1880), which showed Catherine de’ Medici (in black) gazing impassively at the bodies of French Protestants who had been slaughtered in the massacre of Saint Bartholomew in 1572. King Charles IX of France is said to have ordered this massacre, at least partly under the influence of Catherine, his mother, allegedly in fear of a (Protestant) Huguenot uprising.
The reading of Debat-Ponsan’s painting has relied for its context on the massacre of communards in the Paris Commune, which followed the Franco-Prussian War. The expressions and gestures of her court were in stark contrast to those of Catherine de’ Medici. One fine detail worth noting is the blood staining the blade of the sword held by the man to the right of Catherine, and his obeisant bow.
In 1882 - 1883, Debat-Ponsan traveled with his brothers-in-law to Istanbul, where he became inspired to paint Orientalist works. The best-known of those is “The Massage. Hammam Scene” (1883), which shows a woman undergoing massage in a Turkish Hammam, or baths.
In addition to his Orientalist paintings and portraits, Debat-Ponsan painted Naturalist scenes from the countryside, such as “A Corner of the Vineyard” from 1886. These appear to have been influenced by the success of Jules Bastien-Lepage, who had died only two years earlier. Although their clothing is patched, the farmworkers there are clean, well-nourished and wholesome, and he perhaps never fully embraced the Naturalist style.
The grandest of Debat-Ponsan’s paintings is his wonderful depiction of the Muses in “The Crown of Toulouse” (1894) in the Salle des Illustres (Room of the Illustrious) in Toulouse’s Capitol building. This is perhaps the height of ‘municipal art’ in the Third Republic. This unusual depiction of a Gypsy at her Toilet from 1896 is still idealized and idyllic, rather than showing the real-world squalor and dirt of life on the road. The gypsy’s caravan and white horse are almost theatrical. By this stage, Debat-Ponsan’s meticulous realist style was softening and becoming more painterly, as seen in the wayside flowers in the foreground.
Politics returned to Debat-Ponsan’s art in his “Nec mergitur”, or “Truth Leaving the Well” of 1898. This is generally accepted as being his statement on the Dreyfus affair, which corroded politics in France between 1894 and 1906. Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason in December 1894, for passing French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, and was imprisoned in the notorious Devil’s Island penal colony in French Guiana.
After a further investigation in 1896, which revealed another Army officer as the culprit, new evidence was suppressed, leading to the acquittal of that officer, and clumsy attempts to charge Dreyfus with additional crimes. France divided in its support for Dreyfus: Debat-Ponsan was firmly convinced of his innocence, and painted this work showing the naked Truth emerging from her mythological well and brandishing her mirror.
Sadly, although a bold public statement, as a work of art it is too closely related to Gérôme’s painting of Truth, which was exhibited two years before. Most of Debat-Ponsan’s remaining paintings are pastoral scenes such as “Rest in the Field” (1901), and “The Cowherd” (1910), but they do show his increasingly painterly style.
Édouard Debat-Ponsan seems to have continued to paint until his death in 1913. His son, Jacques, was already on his way to becoming a celebrated architect, winning the Prix de Rome (in Architecture) in 1912, and his grandson Michel Debré (1912-1996) became the first Prime Minister of France under the presidency of Charles de Gaulle, and one of those who drafted the constitution of the Fifth Republic, which continues today.
Landschaftspartie mit stattlichen Bäumen
Peasant woman with cows by a river
1902Resting in the Field
1901Cavalier au dressage
1894Im türkischen Bad
1883Bord de rivière
Le jardin du peintre
Portrait de jeune femme en blanc
1890Courting by the Stream
Potting Flowers
1891Bağdaş kurmuş satici kiz
1882Young woman by a stream with cattle
1902Scène de vendanges
Plowing of the fields
1891Le riant passage (study)
1908Tunis, le cheval noir du Général Boulanger
1887Un gué à Salies
1899Portrait d'élégante
1888Leading the herd to drink
1910Debat-Ponsan was a diverse artist who did not restrict himself to one type of composition, and instead showed a predilection for many themes, each of which were well established in the repertoire of artists continually exhibiting at the Salon. He is a difficult painter to situate in late nineteenth century painting because his outspoken views about the nature of the political world were often not matched by the quality of his visual works.
He continued to exhibit at the Salon becoming the President of the Société des Artistes Français during his career.
Quotes from others about the person
Fine painter, he is also in some studies of landscapes where the reports of tones are of an exquisite finesse, where the imprecise forms of the distant of architecture or trees have exactly the accent which indicates without specifying them narrowly ... It is in works grouped by the piety of his family that Debat-Ponsan reveals his true nature as an artist. He is right and true, flexible and free, and it is the most beautiful eulogy that can be addressed to him.
During the 1870s Edouard met and married Marguerite Hortense Louise Garnier, the daughter of Louis Jules Garnier and Julienne Hanotin. The couple would have three children: Marguerite Jeanne who became a doctor; Jacques; and Simone - Simone's first husband was Jacques Dupré (the son of Julien and Marie Dupré).