[4] Friant was sent to the lycée to learn Latin, as Madame Parisot intended for him to follow in her husband's footsteps and become a chemist.

His father agreed, and the young Friant was placed under the guide of a private tutor who would arrange his academic work so that time remained for painting.

Under the guidance of Louis-Théodore Devilly, director of a school in Nancy and a proponent of realism,[5][6] Friant learned the art of still life and landscape painting.

[6] Friant, becoming disenchanted by the academic style of the atelier method, returned to Nancy where he worked with the painter Aimé Morot.

[5][4] In 1882, Aimé Morot encouraged him to debut two of his works at the Salon: The Prodigal Son and Studio Interior, for which he received an honourable mention.

This painting depicts a revanchist patriotic image of a group of people visiting a cemetery in which the French victims of the Franco-Prussian War were buried.

The painting was acquired by the State and added to the collection of the Luxembourg[7] and is now on permanent display in the Musée des beaux-arts in Nancy.