MARCEL JUNCA
(1818-1878)
Souvenirs of Louisiana.
Two charcoal and stump drawings on paper mounted on canvas, signed below, one on the left, the other on the right.
78 x 109 cm at sight.

Exhibition:
Salon de 1867, Paris, n°1855.

Born in Bayonne in 1818, François Marcel Junca was destined to be a sailor
like his father, a naval officer, but his health did not allow him to
continue in this way. He then entered the Toulouse Conservatory,
then Paris at the age of 18 and began a great career as an opera singer.
At the same time, he drew. "Being at the Conservatoire, the artist liked,
although having no notion of drawing, to pencil the maritime sites
in the middle of which his childhood had passed. Ciceri saw some
of these shapeless sketches, was struck by the young singer's dispositions,
and hired him to come and work in his office in his spare time, at
Menus-Plaisirs. From that moment on, Junca made music
and painting work together... Numerous paintings have placed him in the artistic world
as a distinguished marine and landscape painter. "(Pierre Larousse,
Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, 1866-1876)