Richard Clague (1816 - 1878) France. Oil on Board. Measure 5"in H x 3 1/2"in W and 8"in H x 6 1/2"in W with frame. Credited with introducing the tradition of European landscape painting, especially that of the Barbizon School, to the Louisiana landscape during the late 19th century, Richard Clague was both a teacher and mentor to a group of New Orleans artists that included William Buck Marshall Smith and Charles Giroux. They were called the Bayou School of Painting, and they recorded in a "monumental and precise manner the distinctive Spanish moss and hazy atmosphere of the bayou region." (Falk) Clague's landscapes were the first to depict successfully the character of the Delta and characteristically included hunting camps, trappers' cabins and boats on sluggish streams. He was born Paris, France to a wealthy New Orleans family that sent him to Switzerland to school where he studied with Jean Charles Ferdinand Humbert in Geneva. Subsequently he studied with Leon Pomarade, a painter and muralist who worked in St. Louis and New Orleans. The death of his father in 1836 brought him a large inheritance, which he used for extensive travel and study. By 1849, Clague was in Paris, studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts with Francois Picot. He exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1848, 1849 and 1853. In France, he was strongly influenced by the rural subjects and plein-air method of the Barbizon artists. In 1856-57, he was the draftsman on an expedition sponsored by Napoleon III to Algeria to discover the source of the Nile River, and shortly after this, he settled in New Orleans. He opened a studio with Paul Poincy. In 1861, he was briefly enlisted in the Confederate Army but resigned his commission. He lost most of is money during the Civil War, and afterwards lived frugally, earning a living by painting including portraiture and teaching painting.