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CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF ANTOINE VOLLON
     
1833
  April 20: Antoine Vollon is born in Lyon.  
     
1847-55
  He apprentices as an engraver at the Imprimerie Char-rasse at Lyon, then studies printmaking at the local École des Beaux-Arts.  
     
1848
  The July Monarchy is toppled. King Louis-Philippe goes into exile, and the Second Republic is declared.  
     
1852
  A plebiscite establishes the Second Empire, under the rule of Napoleon III.  
     
1856
  Vollon registers at the Louvre as a student of Hippolyte Flandrin, probably in order to copy paintings there. Three years later, he settles definitively in Paris.  
       
1860   He befriends the Barbizon painter Charles-François Daubigny and meets the Realist School artist Théodule Ribot who, with Octave Tassaert, Camille Corot and François Bonvin, influence his early style. He marries Marie-Fanny Boucher, by whom he has two children: Alexis, a painter, and Marguerite.  
       
1863   His first submission to the Paris Salon is rejected. He exhibits at the Salon des Refusés, where Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe causes a sensation.  
       
1864   Vollon exhibits at the Salon for the first time.  
       
1865   Bazille and Monet share a studio in Paris.  
       
1866  

Vollon is represented at the Exposition des Beaux-Arts in Rouen; his Singe du peintre is purchased by the Musée des Beaux-Arts there.

Émile Zola defends the Impressionists, especially Manet.

 
       
1867   The Exposition Universelle is held in Paris. Manet and Courbet each set up pavilions nearby dedicated to their own work.  
       
1869   Vollon paints with Carpeaux at the Channel port of Le Tréport; he begins Poissons de mer (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), exhibited the next year at the Salon.  
       
1870  

Vollon is decorated Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur. By December, he settles in Brussels.

This catastrophic year is marked by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, the proclamation of the Third Republic and the Siege of Paris. Monet and Pissarro take refuge in England.

 
       
1871  

Vollon travels to Haarlem, Amsterdam and (with Boudin) Antwerp.

France is defeated by Germany. The Paris uprising known as the Commune is violently suppressed.

 
       
1873   He paints at Dieppe, returning there occasionally until 1876.  
       
       
1874   The first Impressionist Exhibition takes place in Nadar’s studio (subsequent ones occur in 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882 & 1886).  
       
1875   Vollon exhibits at the Salon Le Cochon (Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario).  
       
1876   He exhibits Femme du Pollet, à Dieppe (Gemeente-museum, The Hague) to great critical applause.  
       
1878  

At the Exposition Universelle, Vollon is awarded a Gold Medal.

The Faure and Hoschedé collections of Impressionist art are put up at auction, achieving risible prices.

 
       
1879   Vollon’s first solo exhibition takes place on the premises of the popular new arts journal La Vie Moderne.  
       
1882   The art critic Albert Wolff commissions two Paris cityscapes from Vollon.  
       
1883  

Nine paintings by Vollon are exhibited at the National Academy of Design, New York, to help pay for the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty.

The first major exhibition in the United States of
Impressionist paintings takes place in Boston.

 
       
1886  

Vollon exhibits his first landscape at the Salon, entitled Vue de Tréport (The John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art).

Seurat completes A Sunday Afternoon at La Grande Jatte (Art Institute of Chicago).

 
       
1889   Vollon serves on the jury of the Exposition Universelle and exhibits there. The Eiffel Tower is completed in
time for the exhibition’s opening.
 
       
1891   Seurat dies. Gauguin makes his first trip to the South Pacific, where he settles definitively four years later.  
       
1894   Caillebotte dies, bequeathing much of his collection of Impressionist paintings to the French State.  
       
1897   Vollon is elected to membership in the Institut de France.  
       
1900  

At the Exposition Universelle, his eight entries, including L’Automne (exhibited here), earn him the Grand Prix.

July: He suffers a stroke while painting at Versailles and later contracts a deadly fever. He dies on August 27. Two days later, he is buried at the Père-Lachaise
cemetery.

 
       
1901   May 20-23: The contents of Vollon’s studio are sold at auction at the Hôtel Drouot.