Rating and value of paintings by Fernand Cormon

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Rating and value of the artist Fernand Cormon    

The artist Fernand Cormon leaves behind a classic body of work, composed mainly of realistic scenes. He trained many artists of his time. Now, prices for his works are skyrocketing under auctioneers' hammers.

His paintings are highly prized, especially by French and English buyers. The price at which they sell on the art market ranges from €10 to €54,000, a very substantial range but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to Cormon's works.

His painting Odalisque dating from 1892 sold for €54,000 while it was estimated at between €25,000 and €34,000.

Order of value from a simple work to the most prestigious

Style and technique of artist Fernand Cormon

In Cain Fleeing with his Family (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), in The Artist in his Studio (Petit Palais, Paris), Cormon modulates light with broad impastos and superimposed glazes, reinforcing the volume of bodies with a subtle play of shadows and reflections.

The powerful modeling, built up by a juxtaposition of blended passages and more abrupt strokes, recalls the processes of the Old Masters, but the painter combines it with a muted palette - browns, ochres, grays - that dramatizes the whole and lends the scene an almost sculptural intensity.

In his late portraits, the organization of the material tends towards greater suppleness: contours, once chiseled with firmness, dissolve into more fluid transitions, the paste lightens, revealing a more subtle search for complexion and texture.

The touch itself follows this evolution, gradually abandoning the rigor of his early compositions in favor of a freer handling of the brush.

Here, the density of the paste reinforces the physical presence of the figures; there, it becomes lighter, as in his drapery studies where luminous highlights suggest more than they describe.

This alternation between rigorous drawing and fluid gesture marks a transition in her painting, where the sculptural rendering of forms gradually gives way to a more nuanced exploration of the effects of light and matter.

Fernand Cormon, his life, his work

Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts under Alexandre Cabanel, Cormon spent time in Rome before exhibiting at the Salon, where he quickly made a name for himself with his vast historical compositions.

In 1880, with Cain fleeing with his family (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), he presents a biblical tale transfigured by a dramatic sense of movement and sculptural power of modeling.

The figures, with their hieratic poses and powerfully modeled flesh, seem to emerge from the canvas, carried by a muted light that accentuates the dramatic tension of the scene.

Far from the Impressionist research then marking the art scene, Cormon continues in this monumental vein, drawing his inspiration from the great frescoes of history and mythology.

In La Mort de Ravana (1887, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse) or Retour d'un chasseur de réennes(Musée d'Orsay, Paris), he explored a history painting with anthropological overtones, looking to primitive ages or exotic civilizations for new motifs of epic grandeur. 

Early in the 1880s, his studio became a must for many young painters: Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh or Émile Bernard train here, attracted by the breadth of gesture and rigor of drawing he teaches.

There, in teaching where construction and modeling take precedence over fleeting effects of light, students learn to structure the figure, weigh its volumes, articulate its posture in space.

Cormon himself, although faithful to an academic aesthetic, does not confine himself to the grand genre and develops in his portraits and studio scenes a freer touch, where the pictorial material becomes more vibrant and the palette more muted.

Professor at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1889, academician in 1898, he embodies a certain orthodoxy of grand official art, while cultivating, in his more intimate works, a more nuanced approach to color and light.

At the end of his career, he abandoned the great heroic machines in favor of more intimate compositions, where attention to textures and chromatic modulations gradually replaced the sculptural rigor of his beginnings.

Focus on Cain fleeing with his family, Fernand Cormon, 1880

With Cain fleeing with his family (1880, Musée d'Orsay, Paris), Cormon gives a monumental vision of the biblical myth, where the flight of the first murderer stands out in all its archaic gravity.

On an arid land, dominated by dark, earthy hues, Cain's family advances, weighed down by the weight of the original sin.

The colossal patriarch, his beard in disarray, leads his people on a heavy march, his body tense with effort, his anxious gaze turned towards an unknown horizon.

The light, muted and muffled, strikes obliquely against the powerfully modeled flesh, emphasizing the almost sculptural relief of the bodies. 

The composition, both rigorous and dramatic, contrasts the massiveness of the figures with the desert expanse that opens up behind them, an empty, inhospitable space where the echo of banishment can be read.

The heritage of academic art is evident in the nobility of the attitudes and the solemnity of the treatment, but Cormon infuses it with an expressive intensity that contrasts with the coldness of some of the great official machines.

Here, the drama is not played out in spectacular brilliance, but in the silent weight of the punishment that weighs on the bodies and in the tragic content of the looks.

By its scale and restrained energy, Cain is part of this vein of epic realism where monumentality meets the anthropological dimension, an approach that the artist would pursue in his great prehistoric scenes, questioning the primitive and universal part of humanity.

L'empreinte de Fernand Cormon sur sa période

At the crossroads of great academicism and the plastic research of a generation in search of renewal, Cormon imposed, through the breadth of his compositions and the rigor of his teaching, a lasting imprint on the artistic scene of his time.

While his work is part of the tradition of great historical art, where the power of modeling and the monumentality of gesture take precedence over the colorful brilliance of the avant-gardes, his influence nevertheless extends beyond the official framework of the Salons.

In his studio, where Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and Bernard passed through, he transmitted an approach in which the construction of the figure, the organization of volumes and the mastery of drawing took the place of founding principles.

There, far from Impressionist dazzle, young painters learn to structure their compositions, weigh up masses and articulate space with a rigor that, for some, will serve as the basis for more radical research.

Professor at the École des Beaux-Arts, academician, he embodied in the eyes of his contemporaries the authority of an art that, without breaking with tradition, sought to renew its motifs and subjects, drawing on the history of origins or a pictorial anthropology as yet unseen.

His great prehistoric scenes, in which figuration becomes more brutal, more archaic, influence a certain vein of fin-de-siècle naturalism, where science and art intertwine to tell the story of humanity's past.

In this tension between classicism and modernity, between the heritage of the masters and openness to new visual sources, Cormon marked his era with a paradoxical imprint: both guardian of a tradition and passer-by, he was the one who, while setting frameworks, allowed some of the pictorial revolutions of the century to come to be born in the shadow of his studio.

Today, many of his works are held by private collectors, who play the greatest role in preserving his work.

Recognizing the artist's signature

Not all Fernand Cormon's works are signed. They may be at the bottom of the painting, but if you think you own one, it's best to have it appraised to be sure of its originality.

Knowing the value of a work

If you happen to own a work by or after Fernand Cormon, don't hesitate to request a free appraisal using our form on our website.

A member of our team of experts and chartered auctioneers will contact you promptly to provide you with an estimate of the market value of your work, as well as ad hoc information about it.

If you wish to sell your work, you will also be accompanied by our specialists in order to benefit from alternatives for selling it at the best possible price, taking into account the inclinations of the market.