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- Édouard Riou (1833-1900)
Etretat beach, ca. 1875
Oil on panel - 39.7 x 83.8 cm
Le Havre, Musée d’art moderne André Malraux
Photo: Le Havre, Musée d’art moderne André Malraux - See the image in its page
As part of a publication project, art historian Aline Lemonnier-Mercier and I, Lucile Haguet, curator of libraries at the Bibliothèque municipale classée du Havre, are looking for original drawings, paintings and archives by the artist Édouard Riou.
Riou was above all a great and prolific illustrator, first of Jules Verne and many other authors, but also of the opening of the Suez Canal. More than 5,000 drawings are attributed to him. He was the most important travel illustrator of his time, and is credited with the graphic invention of the "green hell", that sprawling virgin forest.
Édouard Riou spent his childhood and adolescence in Le Havre. An accomplished painter, he exhibited in Le Havre with Claude Monet, Édouard Manet and Gustave Courbet, among others, in 1868. In 1869, he was commissioned by the French government to paint a monumental portrait Cérémonie d’inauguration du canal de Suez à Port-Saïd, now in the Musée de Compiègne.
We’d like to thank anyone who can send us a drawing, painting, caricature or letter, as Édouard Riou’s work is widely dispersed, often misidentified or associated with the wrong first name.
You can contact us by e-mail at this address
Lucile Haguet.