Émile Friant was born April 16, 1863 in Dieuze, a small city in eastern France near Nancy. His father worked at a locksmith’s shop while his mother was from a peasant family and from fourteen years of age had work as a dressmaker - certainly modest beginnings for an artist who would attain such prestige. He was just fifteen years of age when he first exhibited at the Salon des Amis des Arts in Nancy and was referred to as “le petit Friant,” or the “little Friant”. That the organization permitted the entrance of a fifteen year old, exhibiting alongside established artists, attests to his immense talent. This exhibit created a demand for his work and he had continued success for the next year, until the city of Nancy granted him a scholarship which allowed him to relocate to Paris. He was sixteen and a half years of age, leaving his home and embarking on a journey alone. In the autumn of 1879, he settled in an apartment on the rue Notre Dame des Champs and entered the atelier of Alexandre Cabanel, a well-established academic painter.
The life and work of Emile Friant presents an artist who was equally influenced by Paris as well as by his home city of Nancy. But he remained attached to a more academic style of naturalism which appealed to a public both in France and abroad as he demonstrated that the training he received in Nancy could be used to maintain a substantial career. He died in 1932.
[Oil on canvas, 254 × 334 cm]
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