The Storm by Pierre Auguste Cot

The Storm by Pierre Auguste Cot, oil on canvas 1880, is a French academic classical painting of two young people running to take shelter from a storm, brightly lit against a darkened forest landscape, a billowing piece of fabric shielding them against the rain. Cot combines a modern realism that borders on the photographic with inspiration from sources in classical antiquity, such as the shepherd costume from the ancient world and the girl’s diaphanous drapery. The Storm was commissioned as a type of companion piece to Cot’s other large painting of young lovers, Springtime, both of which became enormously famous in Europe and America. Pierre Auguste Cot (1837 - 1883) was a classical academic French painter who attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and studied under Alexandre Cabanel and William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Cot exhibited very successfully in the French Salon and became enormously popular, winning many prizes including the French Legion of Honor. Cot excelled in the 19th century academic manner, creating smoothly modeled, carefully executed classical figurative compositions drawn from life and sources from classical antiquity. Cot died prematurely at age 46, memorialized by a monument in the city of his birth. After a century of neglect, interest has rekindled in the painters of the 19th century academic tradition.