Jean Charles Cazin

Jean Charles Cazin (1840-1901), French landscape painter, son of a well-known doctor, FJ Cazin (1788-1864), was born at Samer, Pas-de-Calais.

After studying in France, he went to England, where he was strongly influenced by the pre-Raphaelite movement. His chief earlier pictures have a religious interest, shown in such examples as "The Flight into Egypt" (1877), or "Hagar and Ishmael" (1880, Luxembourg); and afterwards his combination of luminous landscape with figure-subjects ("Souvenir de fête," 1881; "Journée faite," 1888) gave him a wide repute, and made him the leader of a new school of idealistic subject-painting in France.

He was made an officer of the Legion of Honour in 1889. His charming and poetical treatment of landscape is the feature in his painting which in later years has given them an increasing value among connoisseurs. His wife, Marie Cazin, who was his pupil and exhibited her first picture at the Salon in 1876, the same year in which Cazin himself made his debut there, was also a well-known artist and sculptor.

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.