Adolphe Déchenaud

Adolphe Déchenaud (28 June 1868, Saint-Ambreuil – 27 December 1926, Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French painter who specialized in Biblical/historical scenes and portraits.

At the age of fifteen, having noticed his artistic talent, his father enrolled him at the Académie Julian, where he studied with Jules Joseph Lefebvre, Gustave Boulanger and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant.

Three years later, he shared the Grand Prize with Auguste Leroux for his version of Judith beheading Holofernes.

During this time, he painted the portraits of several of his fellow residents who would later become well-known, including André Devambez, François-Léon Sicard and Emmanuel Pontremoli.

In 1914, at the beginning of World War I, he produced one of his most familiar paintings; Le comité des forges (the Foundry Committee), a tableau of the twenty-five most powerful French industrialists.