Félix Ziem French, 1821-1911

Félix Ziem was a French painter known for his light-filled depictions of waterways in Venice, Istanbul, and Constantinople. Ziem’s work often drew comparisons to works of Barbizon School painters as well as to the paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner. Born on February 26, 1821 in Beaune, France, his last name comes from his Croatian father. Ziem initially went on to study architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Dijon before moving to Marseilles in 1839. In Marseilles, he studied under the painter Adolphe Monticelli and decided to pursue art as a career after travelling to Venice in 1841. From 1849 onward, Ziem became a perennial exhibitor at the Paris Salon while accruing significant wealth from his work over the subsequent decades. The artist died on November 10, 1911 in Paris, France. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others.