About the Artist

was born at Grenoble on the 14th of January 1836. He studied first with his father, a pastel painter, and went tof [Horace] Lecoq de Boisbaudran, drawing school, later under Couture. He exhibited in the Salon of 1861, and many of his works displayed there in the following years. In 1863 he appeared with Harpignies, Manet, Legros and Whistler in the Salon des Refuses. Whistler introduced him to English artistic circles, and he lived for some time in England, many of his portraits and flower pieces are located in English galleries.His portrait groups, arranged somewhat after the manner of the Dutch masters. His paintings of flowers are perfect examples of his art, and form perhaps the most famous section of his work in England. In his later years he devoted much attention to lithography, which had occupied him as early as 1862, but his examples were then considered so revolutionary, with their strong lights and black shadows. In 1876, he married a fellow painter, Victoria Dubourg, after which he spent his summers on the country estate of his wife's family at Buré. After L'Anniversaire in honour of Berlioz in the Salon of 1876, he regularly exhibited lithographs, some of which wore excellent examples of delicate portraiture, others being elusive and imaginative drawings illustrative of the music of Wagner (Fantin-Latour championed him in Paris as early as 1864), Berlioz, Brahms and other composers. He illustrated Adolphe Juiliens Wagner (1886) and Berlioz (1888). There are excellent collections of his lithographic work at Dresden, in the British Museum, and a practically complete set given by his widow to the Louvre. Some were also exhibited at South Kensington in 1898-1899, and at the Dutch gallery in 1904. he died on the 28th of August 1904.