Paul Vogler

Paul Vogler

Paris 1852 – Verneuil-sur-Seine 1904

Vogler, the son of a little-known painter, was primarily self-taught.  After receiving initial instruction from his father, he received no further professional training, nor did he ever attend a fine art school or academy.  He was an admirer and friend of Alfred Sisley, who influenced both his palette and technique and Sisley helped Vogler early in his career. Vogler was also an intimate friend of the art critic Aurier, the premier defender of Gauguin and Van Gogh. 

Vogler possessed an ease and sensibility in his painting t often noted by his contemporaries.  His free application of color earned him a place in the ranks of the Impressionist landscape painters; he had several fervent admirers in the early collectors of this school.  Unfortunately he appears to have been profligate with the earnings his success rewarded him. 

Yet Vogler produced beautiful canvases known for their fresh, harmonious colors and radiant depiction of light and exhibited along with Bonnard, Vuillard, Lautrec, Anquetin and Signac at the galerie Vollard, his subjects including Le Canal de Saint-Martin, the Quai de Valmy in Winter, Banks of the Oise at L’Isle Adam, and Meules in the Winter Sun. While Vogler was generally admired, Pissarro criticized him (as Pissarro did Raffaelli and Helleu), when in the later 1880s Pissarro embraced a quasi-pointillist technique that was rejected by Vogler. The critic Lugné Poc took a more positive view and included Vogler’s name among several artists he admired, alongside Vuillard, Denis, and Sérusier.

The Galerie Ambroise Vollard staged an Exposition Paul Vogler in February to March 1899, which included some thirty-eight landscapes. Revues in La Revue des beaux-arts et des lettres (March 15, 1899) and in Mercure de France (April 1899) were positive and one critic observed:

Peintre autodidacte en marge de l'impressionnisme, Paul Vogler est influencé un temps par Alfred Sisley. Sa technique simple et vigoureuse qui met en valeur des effets de lumière, lui permettra de connaître le succès. Il réalise les décors de Pelléas et Mélisande de Maurice Maeterlinck en 1893 pour le Théâtre de l'Œuvre de Lugné-Poe. On lui doit des paysages du Midi (Cassis, Marseille..), de Bretagne (Golfe du Morbihan..) de nombreuses vues de la Seine et de l'Oise,( Éragny, Neuville-sur-Oise, Pontoise..). Il affectionne les paysages de neige, les crépuscules, les effets atmosphériques qui lui donnent l'occasion de mettre en valeur une touche dynamique et expressive.