Félix Fossey

This pair of paintings by Félix Fossey (Paris, 1826 – 1899), entitled "Pompeian Scenes", represents a refined example of neoclassical genre painting, inspired by archeology and daily life in ancient Rome. Executed in oil on panel and signed at the bottom, the paintings are framed in splendid original gilded frames, which enhance their elegance and compositional refinement. Fossey, a painter active in the second half of the 19th century, was strongly influenced by the academic interest in classical antiquity, very popular in France after the Napoleonic campaigns and the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum. His works reveal a meticulous style, attentive to archaeological and decorative detail, but also capable of narrating intimate and affectionate scenes with grace and chromatic vivacity. The subjects depict idealized domestic moments within environments decorated according to the Pompeian taste: female and infantile figures immersed in luminous and theatrical atmospheres, among mosaics, columns and frescoes, which recall the classical aesthetic filtered through the nineteenth-century sensibility. The balance between compositional rigor and narrative tenderness characterizes Fossey's art, which fully belongs to the strand of French archaeological neoclassicism. These works constitute not only a cultured homage to the ancient world, but also a document of the bourgeois taste of the nineteenth century, in which the beauty of the past is translated into scenes of refined daily life. width cm.27 height cm.41 with frame cm. 48 x 62