4. Alexandre Gabriel Decamps

Figure 8.

Alexandre Gabriel Decamps' "The Monkey Painter," 1833.

(Source: http://dalihouse.blogsome.com/2007/04/26/beasts-get-the-babes

Figure 9.

( Source: http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Image:The_Experts%2C_1837_by_Alexandre-Gabriel_Decamps.jpg)

Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps was an artist who often used animals portrayed as human beings to satirize society and especially the formal artistic community of the time. He was opposed to falsity and pretentions and the often biased views of the academic art coterie of the time was a subject of some of his works. This can be clearly seen in figure nine, 'Monkey Connoisseurs', also known as the Experts, which satirizes the French Academy of Painting,"… which had rejected several of his earlier works on account of their divergence from any known standard." (Life of Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps).

While many of his paintings refer to personal views and preferences, paintings such as the Monkey Painter ( 1833) exhibit a quality that extends beyond the expression of personal issues. The image of the...
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