Louis Eugene Larivière, “Academic Drawing of a Nude Male with Arm Raised”, 1820, Black Pencil, Charcoal, and Stump on Paper, 58.6 x 43.7 cm, Private Collection
Born in Paris in December of 1800, Louis-Eugene Larivière was the second son of the painter André Philippe Larivière, and grandson of Charles Lepeintre, Painter to the Duke of Orleans. Three years separated Eugene from his elder brother, Charles-Philippe. The sons having demonstrated natural abilities for painting, the father placed both with French painter Anne-Louis Girodet who in turn presented them to the Special School for Fine Arts: Charles-Philippe in 1813 and Louis-Eugene in February 1816.
Following in his older brother’s footsteps, Louis-Eugène Larivière participated in the historic composition competition as Girodet’s student. Ranked thirteenth, he did not enter the second round, but was noticed and, as a painter, was exempted from military service. Unfortunately, illness prevented Larivière from competing again in 1823; and the illness finished by carrying him off prematurely in June of 1923 at the age of twenty-one years old.
A few family portraits by Louis-Eugène Larivière survive: one full of candor of his sister Pamela-Eugenie conserved at the Louvre; a protrait of his brother Edmond Larivière, and a “Self-Portrait”, both at the Museum of Picardy in Amiens. The works come from the collection of the painter Albert Maignan, the artist’s nephew by marriage who donated them to the Amiens Museum from the contents of the Lariviere brothers’ studio.
A few male acacemy drawings by Eugene can be found at the Amiens Museum similar to the image above. One of them is inscribed on the verso, “Eugène Larivière. 18 août 1817”, and countersigned by his teacher, the painter Pierre-Narcisse Guérin ,who corrected the student exercises of the Fine Arts students that day. Another academy drawing, dated 1818, and a few anatomical studies are know to exist in private collections.