The rest of the time, to skip a meal, I quell my hunger by eating bread crumbs with wine and sugar.

By serendipity, he was commissioned a painting for the Louvre Museum and earned 1.000 francs for it, a hefty sum at the time.

Joachim Gasquet once mentioned his "unwavering bravery and unquestioning pride",[6] someone who, on his deathbed, still had faith in "the beauty, the art and the genius of the world".

Although he met Paul Cézanne, who became a close friend of his, at the Académie Suisse in Paris in 1861, he rejected his style.

[1] For John Rewald, Emperaire, "was able to loop out of Cézanne's influence, and his work denotes a surprising personality and a most peculiar strand".