Albert Besnard 1849-1934

Born into a family of artists—his father was a history painter and his mother a miniaturist—Albert Besnard entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1866, where he studied under Alexandre Cabanel and Sébastien Cornu. Awarded the Grand Prix de Rome in 1874 for The Death of Timophanes, he became a resident of the Villa Medici before extending his stay in Italy, where he married the sculptor Charlotte Dubray in 1879.

While living in England between 1881 and 1884, Besnard discovered plein-air painting and the art of portraiture. On returning to France, he brought a new approach to the genre through a luminous technique indebted both to Impressionism and to the elegance of Carolus-Duran.

From the 1880s onwards, Besnard established himself as one of the most sought-after portraitists of his time, while also pursuing an important career as a monumental decorator. He produced prestigious decorative schemes for the Paris Hôtel de Ville, the Sorbonne, the Comédie-Française, the Petit Palais, the French Embassy in Vienna and the Peace Palace in The Hague.

A leading printmaker and the creator of more than two hundred etchings, he served as president of the Société Internationale de la Gravure Originale en Noir. A founding member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1890, he achieved considerable acclaim at its exhibitions, while his works entered collections both in France and abroad.

Appointed director of the Villa Medici in 1913 and subsequently director of the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1922, Besnard was elected a member of the Institut de France in 1912. In 1924, he became the first painter admitted to the Académie Française since the eighteenth century.

An indefatigable traveller, notably visiting India and Ceylon in 1910, Albert Besnard pursued a constant exploration of the effects of light and colour. His work combines technical virtuosity, decorative refinement and a keen understanding of the psychology of his sitters. Crowned with the highest honours of his time, his exceptional career established him as one of the most influential artists of the Belle Époque and the interwar period.