The Landscapes of Louis Remy Mignot: A Southern Painter Abroad

Landscape painter Louis Remy Mignot (1831-1870) was acclaimed during his lifetime as "one of the finest artists of our country." As a Catholic in a Protestant nation, a southerner in the North, and an American abroad, Mignot continually redefined himself in his paintings. His work displays a versatility and delicacy unsurpassed by his contemporaries.
Fully illustrated, this first complete appraisal of Mignot's art reestablishes the prominence of a painter who all but disappeared from the annals of art after his death in 1870. Beginning with only fifteen known paintings, the authors retraced Mignot's life and have identified as his more than one hundred paintings and sketches in private collections and museums.
The Landscapes of Louis Remy Mignot showcases for the first time the full spectrum of Mignot's diverse body of work. Encompassing snow scenes in Holland, New England farmscapes, views of the English countryside, and pre-Impressionist images of Paris, his chromatically nuanced portrayals of open, empty spaces, ruined buildings, and twilit skies reflect a melancholic sensibility that aligns him with intellectual romanticism.

Katherine E. Manthorne is chair of the art history program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.