Jules François Felix Fleury-Husson (1820 Laon - 1889 Sèvres), who wrote under the name Champfleury, was a French art critic, and supporter of the French Realist painters. Laon is a city and commune of France, préfecture (capital) of the Aisne département. ... Road to Sèvres, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, 1855-1865. ...
In 1843 Fleury-Husson moved to Paris. He met Charles Baudelaire and the next year started writing art criticism under the pen-name "Champfleury" for the journal L’Artiste. He was one of the first to promote the work of Gustave Courbet, in an article appearing in an issue of Le Pamphlet in 1848. Charles Baudelaire, photograph taken by Nadar. ... Gustave Courbet (portrait by Nadar). ...
In 1850 he advocated the work of El Greco, and wrote about the Le Nain brothers and Maurice Quentin de la Tour. Self portrait. ...
He editedn the periodical, Le réalisme in 1856 and 1857.
From 1872 until his death in 1889 he was Chief of Collections at the Sèvres porcelain factory.
The following year, Courbet's depiction of the poorer classes in Burial at Ornans (1849, Musée dOrsay) pleased Champfleury because of the nobility the painter gave to the peasantry: it was not seditious because, Champfleury claimed, Courbet was no politico, he simply painted the scene before him.
Nevetheless, Champfleury defended Courbets private exhibition of works on the Avenue Montaigne, though he felt that Realism as the term for the group was misleading.
Champfleury's art theory discards the art-for-art's-sake idea, espousing sincerity in art: a true depiction of actual events and people.
Autograph Letter Signed ("E. Manet") to "Mon cher Champfleury" [the writer and critic Jules Champfleury], inviting him to his studio.
Jules Champfleury was the author of Les Chats, a scientific but also humorous work on the place of cats in human society, published in 1869.
As 19 October was a Monday in 1868, it seems likely that the letter was written in this year, and that Champfleury was visiting Manet's studio to in connection with his work on the project.
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