Biography of John Peter Russell
The Lost Impressionist
John Peter Russel was an impressionist painter from Australia. Although fellow artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet and Henri Matisse were among his admirers, he never achieved worldwide fame during his lifetime, which is why he is today referred to as the "lost impressionist."
As his father, a Scottish engineer died in 1879, Russel inherited his fortune, which allowed him from 1881 to study painting at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. During his training, he met Vincent van Gogh in Paris, with whom he had a lifelong friendship. In 1888 he married Marianna Antoinetta Mattiocco, the Italian model of Auguste Rodin, with whom he fathered six children. In the same year he moved to the Belle-Île in Brittany where he had the "Le Chateau Anglaise" built as his residence. There, Henri Matisse, among others, visited him and introduced him to Impressionist painting.
Later, John Peter Russel turned his attention to sea landscape and portraiture. Family pictures were also increasingly part of his repertoire. After the death of his first wife, he moved to Paris, where he married the American singer Caroline de Witt Merrill and got another child. During the First World War, however, he moved to England and after the war to New Zealand and Sidney.
In 1930, the "lost impressionist" died, which also caused his paintings to fall into oblivion. His daughter later gave 21 of his works to the Louvre, which are now exhibited in the Museé Rodin. Russell's expressive portrait of Vincent van Gogh, written around 1886, is shown in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
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