VOLLON, Antoine
French painter and etcher. Having worked for a maker of enamelled metalwork and an engraver, Vollon attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lyon (1850-52), where he won awards in printmaking. He subsequently copied 18th-century paintings for industrial design. He had begun to concentrate on his own work by 1858 and joined a group of Romantic artists based in Lyon, including Francis Verney (1833-1896), Fleury Chenu (1833-1875), Joseph Ravier (1832-1878) and Joseph and Jean Antoine Bail (1830-1918).
In 1859 Vollon moved to Paris, where he met the realist painters François Bonvin (1817-1887) and Théodule Ribot, who encouraged him to paint genre and still-life scenes. Until 1863 he earned government stipends for copying pictures in the Louvre (e.g. Ribera’s Adoration of the Shepherds); that year he exhibited at the Salon des Refusés. He achieved public recognition in 1864 after his genre piece Kitchen Interior (untraced), one of two paintings accepted at the official Salon, was purchased by the state. In 1865 he earned a Salon medal for Interior of a Kitchen (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes), a genre scene inspired by Chardin and 17th-century Dutch art.
Vollon was best known for his still-lifes, in which he frequently depicted objects stored in his studio. Painted in a vigorous style, these range in palette from pastels to vibrant reds. In the rich colouring and sumptuous effects of Curiosities (Musée du Château de Lunéville, Lunéville) Vollon demonstrated his love of metallic surfaces, armour and elegant porcelains. He exhibited at the Salon until 1880 and was admitted to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1897.
His son Antoine (1865-1945), who worked under the name Alexis Vollon, painted genre scenes and still-lifes and exhibited at the Salon from 1885. He won a few awards but did not achieve the success of his father.
