Background
Constant Mayer was born on October 3, 1829 at Besançon, Doubs, France. His father, Salomon Mayer, merchant, was a native of Durmenach, Haut Rhin, and his mother, Joséphine Mayer, was born at Verdun, Meuse.
Constant Mayer was born on October 3, 1829 at Besançon, Doubs, France. His father, Salomon Mayer, merchant, was a native of Durmenach, Haut Rhin, and his mother, Joséphine Mayer, was born at Verdun, Meuse.
Mayer was educated in the schools of Besançon and at an early age went to Paris and entered the École des Beaux-Arts. He also studied under Léon Cogniet, an able instructor, whose school was celebrated.
Mayer lived and worked in Paris until 1857, when he came to the United States, opened a studio in New York, became a naturalized citizen, was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design, and met with considerable success. His genre pictures, usually rather large canvases, with life-size figures, were exhibited in the Academy; many of them were reproduced in black-and-white; and they made a strong appeal to the popular taste. His "Maud Muller" was exhibited in New York in 1867 and at the Paris Salon of 1870. About 1895 Mayer returned to France, and the remaining years of his life were spent in Paris, where he died in the spring of 1911.
Mayer was hors concours in the Salon, where he was a frequent exhibitor during his several visits to his native land. In his "Song of the Shirt" and "Evangeline, " Mayer showed his predilection for pathetic or mildly melancholy subjects, which, illustrating Hood's and Longfellow's familiar ballads, supplied perfect pictorial equivalents of the original poetic images, and thus made an easy conquest of the public. Less obviously sentimental were such scenes from everyday life as "The Organ Grinder, " "Street Melodies, " "The Knitting Lesson, " and "The Vagabonds, " but in "Love's Melancholy, " shown at the Centennial exposition in 1876, he reverted to his most romantic vein. "A thoroughly competent painter, " wrote Isham, "with a tendency to commonplaceness. " The verdict is not unjust. His "Orphan's Morning Hymn, " first exhibited in 1875, made a favorable impression on several subsequent occasions, especially at the first exhibition of American pictures held by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1888. The Art Journal spoke of his work as being "invested with an expression of sentiment which reflects the highest credit upon his genius" and added that it showed no evidence of sentimentalism. "The First Communion, " painted in 1886, was reproduced in an etching by Thomas Hovenden. "The Knitting Lesson" was prominent in the Prize Fund exhibition held in New York in 1885. "Dimanche, " a young Quakeress with a Bible on her lap, was exhibited at the National Academy of 1883, and at the Paris Salon of 1897. The remark of a critic of 1867 to the effect that the girl's whole story was told by her eyes explains the painter's ability to catch facial expression as well as his shrewdness in capitalizing Whittier's sentiment.
There is no information about his personal life.