Albert Dubois-Pillet

[1][2] Beginning in 1884, he attempted to hide his art-related activities from the military by disguising his name – he added "Pillet", his mother's maiden name, to his name, signing his artworks "Dubois-Pillet".

[3] His painting Enfant Mort (Dead Child), completed in 1881, was displayed at the May 1884 Tuileries Exhibition, where it caught the attention of Émile Zola, who used it as his inspiration for a scene in his 1886 novel L'Œuvre.

[4][5] In the book, artist Claude Lantier, distraught over his son's death, finds himself compelled to create a painting of his dead child.

[4] He met with some of the other exhibitors, and he, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, and Odilon Redon became the "founding fathers" of the Société des Artistes Indépendants.

[4][7] He used his connections to secure desirable venues and terms for their exhibitions,[5] was the primary organizer of the group until 1888,[1] and was a regular exhibitor with them until 1889.

The Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne refers to her as Madame P., but art critic Félix Fénéon called her Mademoiselle B.

[11] In late 1889, Dubois-Pillet was transferred by the army to a post as commander of the gendarmerie in Le Puy-en-Velay, a south central French commune.

[5] The following year, a memorial exhibition, organized by Signac and consisting of sixty-four of Dubois-Pillet's paintings, was mounted by Les Indépendants.

[12][13] Because of a fire which destroyed the majority of his work, as well as his rather early death, his extant oeuvre is relatively small.