Gustave Eugène Castan, Paysage du Valais, Huile sur Bois, 1800s, Encadré

Gustave Eugène Castan, born in 1823 in Geneva and died in 1892 in Crozant, is a Swiss landscape painter, engraver and lithographer.

from 1843 to 1848, Gustave Castan trained in the workshop of Alexandre Calame, whom he accompanied to Italy in 1844, then, the following year, to the Bernese Oberland. During his studies, he became friends with the French painter Eugène Castelnau and followed him to Paris in 1849. In 1850, he visited France and met the painter Auguste Ravier then, in 1852, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, who exercises a decisive influence on him. In 1856, he was mobilized as part of the Neuchâtel affair and drew current affairs scenes. In 1857, he went to the Paris Salon which he visited with Corot, then traveled through Brittany and Normandy. He then shared his life between Switzerland and France and often went to Berry where he became a friend of George Sand. It was during one of these visits that she introduced him to the landscapes of Creuse. He then went there every year in the summer and contributed to the birth of the “valley of painters” and the Crozant school.

In 1865, Castan was a founding member of the Swiss Society of Painters and Sculptors, of which he was president in 1887. Original frame
Molded frame in plaster and gilded wood
58 x 78.5 x 5.5 cm