Monticelli, Adolphe Joseph Thomas (1824–1886)

French Romantic painter. He painted landscapes, portraits, and still lifes. His style, strongly influenced by Eugène Delacroix, is characterized by expressive brushwork and strong colours. A Walk in a Park at Evening 1883 (Louvre, Paris) is typical. His work had a marked impact on Vincent van Gogh.

Monticelli's art is a strange blend of Romantic subjects – fêtes galantes and imagined scenes of medieval court life in Provence – and a heavily encrusted mosaic of rich, glowing paint.

Monticelli learned to paint in Marseille, his birthplace. In Paris in the 1840s he became a devotee of the rococo painter Jean-Antoine Watteau and the Venetian painters, whose work he studied in the Louvre. Helped by the artist Diaz de la Peña, and studying in the studio of Delacroix, he quickly became successful, with artists as well as patrons admiring his work. In 1870, however, he retired to Marseille.