Georges de Lafage-Laujol 1832-1858

Born into a cultured Parisian family, the son of a former naval officer turned journalist, Georges‑Albert‑Léon Laujol de Lafage, known as Georges de Lafage‑Laujol, showed an early and marked talent for drawing. Accompanied by his brother Amilcar, himself a lithographer, Georges joined the renowned studio of Pierre‑Roch Vigneron, before entering the artistic circle of Narcisse Díaz de la Peña on rue Houdon in Montmartre, who became his true mentor.

Around 1849, before he had even turned twenty, Georges enrolled at the École des Beaux‑Arts in Paris, preparing for the prestigious Prix de Rome competition. In 1850, he exhibited for the first time at the Salon de Paris, presenting three landscapes that, praised by some critics for their tender and fresh coloring, conveyed - under the influence of Corot and Chintreuil - the pearly atmospheres of gentle spring mornings. After sending four paintings to the Exposition Universelle of 1855, he received an honorable mention at the 1857 Salon, a sign of swift recognition by his peers.

Regarded as a rising voice among the new generation of landscape painters, and also a talented lithographer, Georges de Lafage‑Laujol developed a delicate, intimate, and poetic style, sometimes tinged with a still-romantic sensibility, reminiscent of Rousseau or Daubigny. A member of the artistic circle at Pont-de-Vaux led by Chintreuil, he frequented the atelier of the Desbrosses brothers on rue du Cherche-Midi, where he met Henri Murger, Baudelaire, and Champfleury.

Although robust by nature, during a plein-air session in March 1858, he returned home suffering from “a bronchitis that developed into rapid phthisis[1].” He died prematurely on March 23, 1858, in Montmartre at the age of twenty-five, at the height of his artistic powers.

After his work was brought back into the spotlight during the Centenary of Lithography exhibition held in Paris at the Galerie Rapp at the end of 1895, one of his paintings, Matinée d’automne, was shown at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 as part of the centennial exhibition of French art (cat. no. 392).

[1] Henriet, F., Jean Desbrosses: peintres contemporains, Paris, A. Levy, 1881, p. 42.