The son of French immigrants and Napoleon Bonapartists, Louis Rémy Mignot was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1831. After study at the Hague, he began to make a name for himself as a landscape painter, with a particularly notable work around that time being Sources of the Susquehanna, tracing the path of the mighty river. Mignot was elected a member of the National Academy of Design and headed off on an Ecuadorian expedition in 1857, and all seemed to be going well for him professionally—or at least until the tragedy of the American Civil War. Mignot had his studio in New York at the time, but he did not opt to publicly support the Union or the Confederacy. He went to London instead, befriending James McNeill Whistler and also trying to establish himself there with the same success that the expatriate Whistler had managed.
Mignot’s epic painting, an 1866 churning view of the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, was done during his London years. War again upset his plans in 1870 when he was forced to abruptly leave Paris—where he was then staying—upon the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian conflict. Mignot caught smallpox and died soon after at the age of thirty-nine, evidently unable to outmaneuver Fate and Death any longer. Niagara is at the Brooklyn Museum, and it really is a forgotten masterpiece that seems to be receiving more worthy attention lately.
Mignot’s epic painting, an 1866 churning view of the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, was done during his London years. War again upset his plans in 1870 when he was forced to abruptly leave Paris—where he was then staying—upon the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian conflict. Mignot caught smallpox and died soon after at the age of thirty-nine, evidently unable to outmaneuver Fate and Death any longer. Niagara is at the Brooklyn Museum, and it really is a forgotten masterpiece that seems to be receiving more worthy attention lately.
