Alexandre-Marie Colin

Bio

Born in the same year as Eugéne Delacroix, Colin entered the école des Beaux Arts in 1814, where both he and Delacroix attracted the attention of their teachers, winning drawing and composition prizes. Colin was enrolled in Girodet’s studio, but owes little to this master’s style. Early in his career he was in the vanguard of Romantic artistic expression and was the object of similar critical attacks as Delacroix for his choice of subjects, while being praised for his painterly skills. Colin’s style was generally less robust than Delacroix’s and was later more constrained by academic convention. His refined brushwork was particularly suited to the smaller scale historical and literary genre pictures in which both he and his close friend Bonington were pioneers.

Although he had several early successes and his Massacre at Chios, exhibited at the same time as Delacroix’s larger work, was a considerable achievement, Colin never attained the fame of either Bonington or Delacroix and, by 1850, seems to have lost momentum, taking up a teaching assignment at the Academy of Nîmes. A frequent exhibitor at the Salon from 1819 until 1868, he concentrated primarily on subjects from historical or literary sources, while painting a few landscapes and enjoying a reputation as an accomplished portraitist.