Auguste Renoir called on friends and family to sit for him throughout his career. In the early years, this was a purely economic decision, avoiding the cost of a professional sitter; later, he continued the…

In 1911, Jean-Louis Forain introduced Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen to Masséida, a young woman of Bambara ethnicity well known in art circles. She regularly posed for artists, including Félix Vallotton, who depicted her facial scarifications in Négresse…

Back in Paris in 1838 after a lengthy absence, Charles Gleyre set about rebuilding his professional network. To do so, he called on longstanding friends, including the painter Sébastien Cornu and his wife Hortense, who…

In 1921, Giovanni Giacometti painted four portraits of his beloved son Alberto, later to become one of the twentieth century’s greatest sculptors. He may have chosen to pay particular attention to his son as he…

Gustave Courbet’s time in exile in La Tour-de-Peilz inspired him mainly landscape paintings. He did not turn his back on the human figure completely, however, following a number of minor Swiss masters in painting portraits…

Auguste Veillon abandoned his theology studies in Lausanne to attend François Diday’s art studio in Geneva. He then travelled to Paris to study on his own. There he met Eugène Fromentin, who sparked a love…

This copy of a 1760 work by Maurice Quentin de La Tour now in the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris reflects the late-nineteenth-century popularity of eighteenth-century art, the golden age of pastel portraiture. As a young…

François Bocion first visited Venice in the summer of 1874. Having honed his talent on and around Lake Geneva, he now hoped travel would give his work fresh impetus. “What it will lead to, nobody…

Édouard Sandoz studied at the École des arts industriels in Geneva before moving to Paris in January 1904. There, he took private classes with the sculptor Jean-Antoine Injalbert and eventually joined Antonin Mercié’s studio at…

The journalist and art critic Edmond Bazire paid Auguste Rodin a visit late in the autumn of 1882. Rodin confided he was still wounded by accusations some years earlier that he had worked with casts…