"Still Life with Pomegranates and Lemons, 1876"
Ernest Blanc-Garin (1843-1916)
19 3/4 x 23 3/4 (29 1/2 x 33 1/2 frame) inches

Ernest Blanc-Garin (France/Belgian, 1843-1916) was primarily a painter of portraits and urban scenes. He studied at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in the studio of Jean-François Port. After moving to Paris, at the École des Beaux-Arts, he was a student of Alexandre Cabanel who was a tremendously popular painter-Napoleon lll favorite-who personified official academic art at the top of the Salon hierarchy and with his contemporary Bouguereau stood as the antithesis of progressive movements, including impressionism. This ethos was embodied by Blanc-Garin and, as such, was a fixture at the Paris Salons beginning in 1868. He participated in the Prix de Rome in 1867 and received an honorable mention at the Paris salon the following year.

After fighting for France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1870), Blanc-Garin relocated to Brussels where he opened a workshop in 1883 for male and female students. The students were given separate lessons, the men on the ground floor, the ladies on the first floor, each with its own entrance.

He was co-founder of the 'Société des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles' (1891).