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Louis Nicholas Adolphe Rinck

Paintings Works On Paper Photographs Sculpture

 

French, 1802 - 1895

Born in Metz, France, Rinck's father was a Hessian officer, suggesting that German was the first language. His full name is Louis Nicolas Adolphe Rinck, though he has often been misidentified as "Adolph D. Rinck." He studied at the Berlin Academy in the mid-1820s, and enrolled in the École des beaux-arts in Paris in 1835.

Rinck moved to New Orleans in 1840 and was soon earning about $2,000 per year, describing himself as an "ami de M. Vaudechamp" in the New Orleans Bee. He remained in New Orleans for thirty years. Margarette, his wife, owned a shop located in the Pontalba Buildings during the early 1850s. After 1869, Rinck spent many years seeking support from the State Legislature for a model farm he intended to establish on property he purchased in Algiers. He published a detailed plan to bring "Happiness to Millions," but was disappointed with the response. Rinck left New Orleans for New York City about 1871.

Rinck painted portraits of Judah Benjamin Charles Alexandre and Charlotte Euphemie Mathilde Grevemberg, Judah Touro, Jean Baptiste Dejan, as well as of unheralded individuals - most famously Free Woman of Color, New Orleans (University Art Museum, University of Louisiana at Lafayette), probably representing an unidentified woman in Rinck's employ. Rinck's example had evident impact on artists such as George David Coulon (1822-1904) and Julien Hudson (1811-1844).

 


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Judah P. Touro
Adolphe Rinck
c. 1848
Gouache on ivory, 3 1/4 x 2 inches
Louisiana State Museum, Loan of Gaspar Cusachs, 02154

Son of a Sephardic cantor, Touro (1775 - 1854) was born in Newport, Rhode Island, and was educated in New York and Boston. He came to New Orleans in October 1801, opening a shop selling candles and other goods of New England manufacture. Touro later expanded into shipping and real estate. He was severely wounded during the Battle of New Orleans while carrying ammunition for Jackson's troops.

Touro was among the most generous philanthropist of the era, donating more than half a million dollars to charities. These included Touro Park in Newport, and in New Orleans an asylum for Yellow Fever victims, a cemetery, a hospital for sailors, a synagogue, and the Unitarian Church headed by his friend, Reverend Theodore Clapp. Touro's will also left endowments to nearly all U.S. synagogues established by 1854.

 


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Mrs. Victor DeJan née Clara Abat
Adolphe Rinck
1841
Oil on canvas, 32 x 26 inches
Signed upper right in red paint, "Rinck 1841"
Louisiana State Museum, Gift of Mrs. Victor Dejan, 09864.03

Josephine Clara Abât was born in New Orleans in 1819, four years after the marriage of her parents, Antoine Abât (1770-1832) and Anne Marie Victoria Félicité Durel (b. 1766). She married Victor Dejan in 1832. Their only two children did not survive to adulthood. The portrait shows the clarity, precision, and finish associated with neoclassicism, together with a softer, more Romantic treatment of the sitter's features.

 


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Jean Baptiste Dejan, Jr.
Adolphe Rinck
1851
Oil on canvas, 32 x 25 5/8 inches
Louisiana State Museum, Gift of Mrs. Victor Dejan, 09864.01

Rinck's style becomes increasingly precise and even mechanical during the early 1850s.

 


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Victor Dejan
Adolphe Rinck
1841
Oil on canvas, 32 x 25 5/8 inches
Louisiana State Museum, Gift of Mrs. Victor Dejan, 09864.02

 


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Mme. Jean Baptiste LePretre (née Sophie Andry)
Adolphe Rinck
1843
Oil on canvas, 44 x 36 1/2 in. (111.8 x 92.7 cm)
Louisiana State Museum, Gift of Mrs. Heda K. Meysenburg, 13061

During the mid-1840s, Rinck sometimes added imaginary backgrounds with mountains and other geographic improbabilities, columns, and grand swags of drapery. The dramatic, hazy skies recall similar treatments in paintings by Eugène Delacroix.