biography of Louis Rémy MIGNOT (1831-1870)

Birth place: Charleston, SC

Death place: Brighton, England

Addresses: NYC, 1855-62

Profession: Landscape painter

Studied: drawing in Charleston, SC; painting in the Netherlands beginning in c.1848; Schelfhout

Exhibited: PAFA, 1856-64; NAD, 1861; Brooklyn AA, 1862-64, 1868, 1872; Maryland Hist. Soc.; Boston Athenaeum; Wash. AA; Paris Salon, 1870; London, 1876 (mem. exh.); AIC, 1888; North Carolina Mus. Art, 1997 (retrospective, traveled to NAD)

Member: NA, 1858; Century Assoc.

Work: Princeton Univ. Art Mus.; NY Hist. Soc.

Comments: After returning from the Netherlands in 1855, Mignot set up his studio in NYC where he remained, except for an 1857 trip to Panama and Ecuador with Frederic E. Church (see entry), until the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1862 Mignot went to England, then Paris. At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, he fled Paris for England, but died suddenly of smallpox at the age of 39. His landscapes fall roughly into three phases: the early Dutch-influenced wintry scenes; the crisp, tropical landscapes from the late 1850s through the mid-1860s that are clearly influenced by his relationship with Church but are more subdued; and his final work from England and France. These late landscapes and nocturnes, with their diminished detail and misty atmospheric effects, are reflective of his new friendship with Whistler. He also painted landscape backgrounds for figurative artists John Ehninger and Eastman Johnson.

Sources: G&W; DAB; Rutledge, Artists in the Life of Charleston; Cowdrey, NAD; Naylor, NAD; Cowdrey, AA &AAU; Rutledge, PA; Rutledge, MHS; Swan, BA; Washington Art Assoc. Cat., 1857, 1859. More recently, see 300 Years of American Art, vol. 1: 242; and the monograph by Coffey and Manthorne accompanying the exh., "The Landscapes of Louis RÈmy Mignot: A Southern Painter Abroad" (NC Mus. of Art, 1997).