Hugues Merle

Hugues Merle was born in 1822 in La Sône.^[1] He studied painting with Léon Cogniet. Merle started exhibiting at the Salon (Paris) in 1847. He received second class prizes in 1861 and 1863.^[2] In 1866 he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

Hugues Merle became a friend of Paul Durand-Ruel in the early 1860s. Durand-Ruel had started buying paintings by Merle in 1862 and introduced the artist to painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau.^[3] Merle was later often compared to Bouguereau and “became a considerable rival of Bouguereau in subject and treatment”.^[4] In the mid-1860s, Merle painted several portraits of Paul Durand-Ruel, his wife, and their son, John.

Hugues Merle died in 1881 in Paris. His son Georges Merle also became a painter.^[5]

David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks TV series character the Log Lady resembles Hugues Merle's painting The Lunatic of Étretat (1871).^[6]

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  Maternal Affection
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  Tristan and Isolde
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  The Storyteller
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  Maternal Love
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  Thoughts of the Future
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  Romeo and Juliet
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  L'abandonnée, 1872
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  Les Orphelines
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  Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, 1879
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  Mother and Child, c. 1869. Clark Art Institute
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  The Forgotten
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  Esther
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  The Scarlet Letter, 1861