カロリュス＝デュラン

Carolus-Duran painted the fashionable elite of Third Republic Paris with a style and assurance that made him one of the most sought-after portraitists of his age. Born in Lille in 1837, the son of a hotel owner, he studied in Paris from 1853 and exhibited first at the Salon in 1859. A scholarship allowed him to travel in Italy and Spain from 1862 to 1866, where he studied the old masters—especially Velázquez—and moved beyond his early interest in Realism. Returning to France, he won a gold medal at the Salon and became celebrated above all as a portrait painter.