Biography

French painter, part of a family of artists. The painter and ceramicist Jean-Charles Cazin and his wife, Marie Cazin (1845-1924), a sculptor and decorative artist, represent a wide range of artistic involvement characteristic of the late 19th-century movement to unify the arts. Their son Michel Cazin (b. 1869) was active as a medallist, sculptor, ceramicist and printmaker.

Jean-Charles Cazin's earliest paintings reveal close affinities with the realist tradition, while his later compositions (mostly landscapes of northern France) demonstrate an awareness of Impressionism and a commitment to recording the changing effects of light and atmosphere. He was sent to England for health reasons but by 1862 or 1863 was living in Paris and active in avant-garde artistic circles. In 1863 he exhibited Recollections of the Dunes of Wissant (untraced), a work based on close observation of the coastline of northern France, at the Salon des Refusés. He enrolled at the Ecole Gratuite de Dessin under Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, where he became friends with Alphonse Legros, Théodule Ribot, Henri Fantin-Latour and Léon Lhermitte, all of whom adopted Boisbaudran's method of developing paintings from memory as a way of heightening perceptions. During this period Cazin also met Marie Guillet, whom he married in 1868.

He was recommended by his former teacher Lecoq de Boisbaudran for a teaching position at the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris in 1866. He moved to Chailly, near Barbizon, where he produced a series of landscapes that were accepted at the Salons of 1865 and 1866. He was nominated for the post of Director of the École de Dessin and Curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours in 1868. Cazin reorganized the school and became interested in the promotion the industrial arts.

Cazin's position as curator allowed him the opportunity to travel and study museum collections in other cities and countries. By 1871, the upheaval of the Paris Commune following the Franco-Prussian War and disagreements with the central museum administration concerning his programs forced him to move to England (1871-1875). Cazin taught art to London students, experimented with wax painting, developed an interest in ceramics and collaborated with the Fulham Pottery as a painter/decorator.

In 1875, Cazin returned to France and he settled near the coastal town of Boulogne where he had spent his childhood. In 1876 he submitted his first major work to the Paris Salon, entitled The Boatyard, and continued to exhibit at the Salon through 1883, receiving a First Class Medal in 1880 and a Gold Medal at the 1889 Universal Exposition.

In the late 1880's a divergence grew between older artists faithful to the academic traditions and the younger artists who followed a freer expression of their talents. In 1890 this divergence of ideas and styles led to the creation of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and Cazin, a founding member, would soon be elected its Vice-president.

In 1893, Cazin traveled to America and exhibited nearly 180 paintings at the American Art Galleries. The exhibition was an instant success. In 1898, the French government appointed Cazin to finish the mural decorations in the Panthéon in Paris begun by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Cazin was awarded a Grand Prix in at the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris. He remained at the forefront of French landscape painting until his death in 1901.