Regis Francois Gignoux (1816-1882)
Regis Francois Gignoux, was born in 1816 in Lyon, France and trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He married Elizabeth A. Christmas (1822 to 1888), an American, and moved to Brooklyn in 1840, where he developed his interests in landscape painting. Within a few years, he opened a studio and took on private students, including George Inness, and enjoyed critical and financial success. In 1858, he joined the influential Tenth Street Studio, along with such noted Hudson River School painters as Albert Bierstadt, Frederic E. Church, Sanford R. Gifford, Martin Johnson Heade, and Worthington Whittredge.
Gignoux is probably best known for his dramatic 1848 painting of Niagara Falls in the Senate Wing of the U.S. Capitol, but his paintings are represented broadly in American museums. His landscape works were poplular and his depictions of Niagara Falls, New England, Virginia, and snow scenes were in high demand. After a long and successful career, Gignoux returned to France in 1870 where he died in Paris in 1882.
Biographical information courtesy of Northeast Auctions