Prosper François Barrigues de Fontainieu

Bio

Barrigues was born in the great port of Marseilles the son of a Portuguese sea captain and his wife, who had settled permanently in the city. A pupil of Simon Denis, Barrigues emulated his master as a landscape artist, first working in the region around his hometown before leaving for Italy. He spent nearly a decade working there, first in Rome and then in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where like so many of his contemporaries he was attracted to the lakes and mountains of the meridionale, producing many sketches that he utilized in the production of more ambitious works. Though Denis was the most immediate influence on him, Barrigues was evidently also familiar with the German artist Johann Philipp Hackert, whose work for the King of the Two Sicilies he would have been known during his time in Naples.

The artist had served in the French navy as a young man and remained on the active list until the Restoration, although he only reached the grade of first Lieutenant. He was elected a member of the Academy of Painting of Marseilles in 1798 and in conjunction with several of his contemporaries in the local artistic community contributed to the formation of a city museum. He began exhibiting at the Paris Salon in the year 1801 and continued to exhibit regularly until 1819, winning a medal in 1817. His exhibited subjects were either views in southern Italy or of the Marseilles area, although he did show a mediaeval subject picture in the Salon of 1819. Sadly a degenerative eye disease left him completely blind by 1822, putting an end to his artistic career. Nonetheless he lived for another thirty years, surviving on his naval pension, until his death in Marseille at the age of ninety.