He failed the prestigious Prix de Rome competition at the École six times, but he felt the problem was with the École, not himself. Couture finally did win the prize in 1837.
In 1840 he began exhibiting historical and genre pictures at the Paris Salon, earning several medals for his works, in particular for his masterpiece, Romans During the Decadence (1847). Shortly after this success, Couture opened an independent atelier meant to challenge the École des Beaux-Arts by turning out the best new history painters.
Couture's innovative technique gained much attention, and he received Government and Church commissions for murals during the late 1840s through the 1850s. He never completed the first two commissions, and the third met with mixed criticism. Upset by the unfavorable reception of his murals, in 1860 he left Paris, for a time returning to his hometown of Senlis, where he continued to teach young artists who came to him. In 1867 he thumbed his nose at the academic establishment by publishing a book on his own ideas and working methods called Méthode et entretiens d'atelier (Method and Workshop Interviews). It was also translated to Conversations on Art Methods in 1879, the year he died.
Asked by a publisher to write an autobiography, Couture responded: "Biography is the exaltation of personality—and personality is the scourge of our time."
Couture’s Portrait of a Seated Woman, (c.1850-1855), discovered in the Gurlitt trove, was identified as having belonged to Georges Mandel from a small hole in the canvas. It was restituted to Mandel's heirs in 2019.[4][5][6]
References
^Wilkinson, Burke. The Life and Works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Dover Publications, Inc., New York. p. 79.
^ ab"Germany returns Nazi-looted work to French Jewish collector's heirs". lootedart.com. Retrieved 2022-02-20. The portrait of a seated woman by 19th-century French painter Thomas Couture had been on display in a spectacular collection hoarded by Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Nazi-era art dealer. German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters presented the work to relatives of Mandel -- who was executed by French fascists near Paris in 1944 -- in a ceremony at the Martin Gropius Bau museum in Berlin.
Boime, Albert (1980). Thomas Couture and the Eclectic Vision. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN978-0300021585.
O'Neill, J., ed. (2000). "Index". Romanticism and The School of Nature: Nineteenth-century drawings and paintings from the Karen B. Cohen collection. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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![Portrait of a Seated Woman (1850-1855)[4][5]](File:Portrait_of_a_Seated_Woman_by_Thomas_Couture.jpg)
![The Supper after the Masked Ball [1857]](File:Thomas_Couture_-_The_Supper_after_the_Masked_Ball.jpg)
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