Archive for the Père Lachaise Cemetery Category

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Gaspard Ulliel

Posted in Père Lachaise Cemetery with tags , on March 18, 2024 by Cade

November 25, 1984 – January 19, 2022

César Award winning actor, Gaspard Ulliel, was one of the most promising French actors of the early 21st Century. By the time he was 30, Ulliel had appeared in a number of international hits including A Very Long Engagement and as the titular characters in both Hannibal Rising and Saint Laurent.  In addition to winning two César Awards (for Engagement and  Saint Laurent) he was nominated for a number of other prestigious awards during his brief career.

Ulliel also appeared in more than a dozen television shows and made-for-TV movies in France. His first English-language series, Disney and Marvel’s Moon Knight, would end up being his last performance.
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Camille Pissarro

Posted in Père Lachaise Cemetery with tags , on March 11, 2024 by Cade

July 10, 1830 – November 13, 1903

The (arguably literal) father of French Impressionism, Camille Pissarro convened, nurtured and pushed the collective that defined one of the most famous movements in modern art history. Born on the island of St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies, Pissarro learned painting from local masters and initially concentrated on the lives and culture of the Caribbean people. He attended boarding school in France and – after spending some time in South America – returned to Paris at the age of 25 to embark on a career as an artist.

His focus on natural settings and rural life remained throughout his career. While he continued his studies at the Académie Suisse and the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Pissarro met fellow artists like Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne. They shared frustration with the strict rules that surrounded the official Salon in Paris. Together, the artists explored themes and techniques that allowed them to express themselves in new, unconventional ways.
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Marcel Marceau

Posted in Père Lachaise Cemetery with tags on January 8, 2024 by Cade

March 22, 1923 – September 22, 2007

Marcel Marceau was arguably the most famous World-War-II-Jewish-Resistance-hero-turned-international-mime-superstar in the history of the world. Top 3, at very least.

Born Marcel Mangel in France along the German border, Marcel’s family fled to central France when the Nazis invaded. He and his brother joined the liberation movement after their father was killed in Auschwitz. With the resistance, they helped rescue many Jewish children from captivity and racial laws at the time. Following the liberation of Paris, Marcel joined the French army for the remainder of the war.

As a young boy, Marcel was introduced to performing when his mother took him to see Charlie Chaplin movies. During his time with the resistance, he dabbled with silent comedy and mime to entertain children being evacuated. When the war ended, he entered college and studied the art of mime officially.

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Georges Bizet

Posted in Père Lachaise Cemetery with tags , on November 13, 2023 by Cade

October 25, 1838 – June 03, 1875

Georges Bizet had all the hallmarks of the stereotypical Romantic composer in 19th Century Europe: He showed genius from an early age. He struggled financially. He shunned religious themes in his work. He didn’t make it to the age of 40…

Bizet’s career, though brief, was full of promise. While he really only has one enduring masterwork (1875’s opéra comique, Carmen) he left behind a number of other memorable scores and compositions like L’Arlésienne and Symphony in C Major. Carmen wasn’t his only opera, of course – he wrote more than a dozen – but it was his final triumph.
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Yves Montand

Posted in Père Lachaise Cemetery with tags , , on October 2, 2023 by Cade

October 13, 1921 – November 09, 1991

Italian-born French singer and actor Yves Montand dropped out of school at age 11 to help his family make ends meet. He spent his spare time in movie theatres watching American comedies and westerns and decided he wanted to become a performer. He worked his way up through local amateur nights and eventually landed in Paris where he met the legendary singer Édith Piaf. Under Piaf’s guidance, Montand became a popular crooner and a successful career was launched.
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Frédéric Chopin

Posted in Père Lachaise Cemetery with tags , on September 18, 2023 by Cade

March 01, 1810 – October 17, 1849

Polish composer and general virtuoso, Frédéric Chopin, is one of the most well-regarded 19th Century Romantic composers. Predominantly written and performed on piano, Chopin’s catalogue of waltzes, études, preludes and mazurkas (folk songs popular in his native Poland) remain amongst the most popular of their kind to this day.

Chopin began taking piano lessons at a very young age and it was immediately clear that the boy possessed genius-level talent. It didn’t take long for him to become fairly well-known and regarded throughout Europe and he soon became of the earliest living music celebrities.
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Georges Méliès

Posted in Père Lachaise Cemetery with tags , on August 21, 2023 by Cade

December 08, 1861 – January 21, 1938

Georges Méliès loved to entertain. As a boy, he built puppets, painted and longed to be on stage. His dream took detours through the military and his family’s shoe business, but he remained persistent. When he discovered the art of stage illusions, he developed a lifelong passion for the craft.

In 1888, Méliès’ father died and he used his inheritance to buy a theatre. Georges plunged headlong into the art of stage magic, creating dozens of new effects and illusions on his stage. He was living his dream.

Then, in 1895, the Lumière brothers invented a cinematograph…one of the very first movie projectors.

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Eugène Delacroix

Posted in Père Lachaise Cemetery with tags , on July 18, 2023 by Cade

April 26, 1798 – August 13, 1863

One of, if not the, most important French Romantic artists in history, Eugène Delacroix shirked the neo-classical perfectionism of his contemporaries and, instead, spent most of his career trying to meticulously express passion and individualism on his canvases. Known early on for his drawing ability, Delacroix explored themes and techniques beyond his stodgy training, while making money illustrating and lithographing books by Shakespeare and other classics. He was introduced to Romanticism while in England and went on to become one of the great masters of the period. Continue reading →

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Honoré de Balzac

Posted in Père Lachaise Cemetery with tags , on April 2, 2014 by Cade

balzac1May 20, 1799 – August 18, 1850

A noted pioneer of the Realist movement in European literature, Honoré de Balzac was a highly influential novelist and playwright. Balzac’s work was known for its flawed characters and minute detail that outlined life in his native France (specifically, Paris) in the time after Napoleon. The energy that drove his characters and stories wasn’t just creation. The man, himself, lived life at a torrid pace. Many of his finished novels and plays are the result of meticulous – borderline obsessive – revision and gallons upon gallons of coffee. Continue reading →

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Georges Seurat

Posted in Père Lachaise Cemetery with tags , on December 17, 2013 by Cade

seurat1December 2, 1859 – March 29, 1891

The father of the post-impressionist movement known as “pointilism”, Georges-Pierre Seurat is one of the most recognizable French impressionist painters. His masterworks like A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1886) and Bathers at Asnières (1883) stand as monuments to the late 19th century French collection as much as any Monet or Cézanne piece. His direct impact on the world of art was confined to a mere 31 years. Seurat died at that age of undisclosed causes in Paris. Continue reading →

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