Théodore Caruelle Aligny

Théodore Caruelle d’Aligny studied under Jean-Baptiste Regnault and Louis-Etienne Watelet. He exhibited at the salon for the first time in 1822. Aligny subsequently traveled to Italy where he met the young Corot in 1826. Although Corot’s work was a major influence on Aligny, Aligny preceeded him in his open air studies of the Roman countryside. Aligny returned to France in 1827 and spent the next several years painting and drawing in the forest of Fontainebleau. He was the first of several generations who would frequent that forest. At the salon of 1837 Aligny exhibited Prometheus on the Caucasus, which won a first class medal and was bought by the state. Aligny continued to exhibit regularly at the salon and also received commissions from Paris churches. In the 1840s he was asked to make drawings of the sites of ancient Greece, which he published in 1845. In 1861 Aligny became director of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lyon.