Rating and value of paintings by Albert Gabriel Rigolot

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Artist's rating and value

Albert Gabriel Rigolot was a landscape and orientalist artist, responsible for a sizeable pictorial output. The market value of Rigolot's works on the art market is therefore quite high, particularly for his paintings.

The prices the works fetch on the auction market range from €150 to €82,700, a substantial range but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to the artist's works.

A work signed by him can fetch millions of euros at auction, as evidenced by his painting Villageois dans le désert, which fetched €82,700.

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

The artist's style and technique

Albert Rigolot is a landscape painter rooted in the naturalist tradition. He follows in the footsteps of the Barbizon painters and the Fontainebleau school, but shows a predilection for nature scenes treated on the motif.

His painting is distinguished by its sensitivity to light, changing atmospheres and landscape structure. His treatment of light is masterful. Rigolot pays particular attention to lighting effects. His skies, which are often vast and nuanced, play a central role in his compositions.

The light is quite diffuse, sometimes golden, which creates end-of-season atmospheres that lend the scenes a particular softness.

He adds a supple, modeling touch to his canvases, using a relatively free touch, but always concerned with form. Foliage, ploughed earth and reflections on water are rendered with fluid paint, without excess material and in a constant search for harmony between detail and whole.

The palette used by the artist is sober and natural, placing himself far from Fauvist and post-impressionist experimentation. Rigolot favors earthy tones, muted greens and blue-greys to reinforce the visual and emotional fidelity of the landscape. This palette contributes to the hushed atmosphere of his compositions.

He demonstrates a marked interest in Orientalism. From the 1890s onwards, he incorporated elements of this kind into his work, influenced by his travels in North Africa. He thus transposed his naturalist style to scenes of palm groves, deserts or markets, retaining the same attention to light and atmospheric effect.

He put his academic rigor at the service of nature. A graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he was a pupil of Léon Germain Pelouse, he maintains a classical base in the structure of his compositions, while adopting a more direct and sensitive approach to the rendering of the motif.

Albert Gabriel Rigolot thus produces a sober and elegant output, faithful to the naturalist tradition but enriched by the experience of travel and a constant attention to variations in light. His work, intended to be restrained, is distinguished by its balance between fidelity to reality and discreet lyricism.

Albert Gabriel Rigolot's work is sober and elegant.

The life of Albert Gabriel Rigolot

Albert Gabriel Rigolot (1862-1932) was a landscape painter born in Paris. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in the studio of Léon Germain Pelouse, he is a recognized painter of the École de Barbizon. This classical training gave him a solid foundation in landscape painting, which he would enrich throughout his career by observing nature.

He was attached to the French landscape - since he began his career with country landscapes, which he observed in the Paris region and in the forest of Fontainebleau.

His work was quickly noticed for the quality of its light and the sobriety of its craftsmanship. His career was also marked by Orientalism, and from the 1890s he traveled to Algeria and Tunisia, which enabled him to renew his repertoire and join the Orientalist circles then in vogue.

He became a member of the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français, alongside artists such as Étienne Dinet or Paul Leroy.

The artist's recognition was institutional, given that he regularly exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français, where he won awards including a silver medal at the 1900 Exposition Universelle. He was named Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 1901, which testifies to the official recognition of his talent.

His educational activity was important : in parallel with his painting career, he taught at the Académie Julian, where he trained several generations of artists, thus contributing to the spread of the principles of rigorous, sensitive landscape painting.

He continued to paint until his death in 1932. Although he received less media coverage than his contemporaries, he remains a respected figure in naturalist and orientalist landscape painting, and his works are still present in several public and private collections.

Albert Gabriel Rigolot thus embodies a discreet but fairly solid figure in French painting, between academicism and impressionist sensibility. His career, which is marked by a constant attachment to light and motif, bears witness to a fidelity to tradition renewed by the experience of travel.

Focus on Campement arabe, Albert Gabriel Rigolot, circa 1895

In Campement arabe, Albert Gabriel Rigolot treats an Orientalist motif with naturalism. He depicts a peaceful scene on the edge of the desert. We see a few figures in djellabas, low tents, palm trees and a vast sky bathed in light.

This canvas is far removed from the theatrical exoticism of certain Orientalist painters, the artist adopting instead a sober, almost documentary approach.

The treatment of light is at the heart of the composition, as the soft, diffused light seems suspended between two moments of the day, dawn or evening. It envelops the silhouettes in a golden halo, softening the contours and lending the whole a silent, meditative atmosphere.

The composition is balanced and open, allowing the eye to move freely through the space, guided by the spacing of the palm trees and the arrangement of the figures, which is intended to be as natural as possible. The low horizon and horizontal lines accentuate the calm and stability of the scene.

The palette is warm and harmonious, Rigolot using earthy tones (ochres, browns, muted reds, which are combined with pale blues for the sky and shadows). This restricted but subtle range evokes the warmth of the climate and the chromatic unity of the Saharan landscape.

Rigolot demonstrates a respectful regard for others. Unlike some contemporary orientalists, Rigolot does not seek spectacular or anecdotal effect. He paints a scene of daily life with restraint and precision, which testifies to careful observation and a certain desire for truth.

This work is fairly representative of his dual identity, as it perfectly embodies the synthesis between his training as a naturalise in France and his experience of the Maghreb. In this work, Albert Gabriel Rigolot demonstrates that Orientalism can be an outdoor painting, as faithful to the light of the South as to the landscapes of the Île de France. In it, he affirms a luminous sensibility and a discreetly humanistic approach to the world he observes.