Roger Jourdain – Fishing on the Seine, 1883

Roger Jourdain was the youngest son of a wealthy cloth merchant from Louviers, Normandy. Trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris (between 1860 and 1870). He moved at an early age via the Salon of his fashionable half-sister Marguérite in circles of well-known writers, painters and composers (Proust, Henri Regnault, John Singer Sargent, Debussy). He admired Manet and Velasquez and painted oriental subjects for a short time, before devoting himself definitively to genre scenes. Strongly attracted – like the Impressionists – to modern life, he paints the leisure activities of the French haute bourgeoisie, such as boat trips on the Seine, the beach in Villerville and intimate family scenes.

In this example Jourdain has chosen to paint himself fishing along the Seine, the technique is masterful and one can clearly see the influence of artists such as John singer Sargent in the effortless depiction of the artist and his rod.
He became a member of the Société des Artistes Français in 1883 and won medals at the Exposition Universelle of 1889 and the Exposition Universelle of 1900. An exhibition of Jourdain’s work was held in 2005 at the Musée Municipal in his native town of Louviers, which houses a fine collection of his work.