Français also produced a large number of pen and ink drawings, enhanced by sepia, notable for their attention to detail and for their technical adroitness and conciseness.

Français's paintings possess some of the prominent features of the work of Corot in his use of tonal colours, loose brushwork and an emphasis on softness of form.

[2] It was a period of struggle during which he made a precarious living mainly by drawing on stone and designing woodcut vignettes for book illustration.

He was part of the Barbizon school of artists dedicated to painting directly from nature, often en plein air, who settled in the area around the Auberge Ganne Inn.

Français was never able to capture Corot's delicacy at depicting the human form but he developed exponentially [14] into a fine landscape painter, albeit one that maintained an element of formalism.

The occasional use of neo-classical subjects and the placing of mythological figures within the landscape that Français sometimes adopted bear a resemblance to the oeuvre of Lorrain.

[14] In 1837 Français exhibited at the Salon for the first time, presenting Sous les saules (Under the Willows) (1837: Tours museum), a painting where the figures are by Henri Baron.

[15] In the mid-1840s, Français travelled regularly with Baron and their friend Nanteuil, to Bougival, a village on the Seine increasingly famous for its scenery and light changes.

Soleil couchant (1845, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon), an autumnal landscape of the river at Bougival, was presented at the 1845 Salon of Charles Baudelaire, one of three that the poet organised.

[16] In 1846 Français travelled to Italy for the first time staying in various locations: Rome (1846/9), Genoa (1846), Pisa (1846), Florence (1846/7), Frascati (1847), Ariccia (1848) and Tivoli (1848/49).

The images created during this interlude, by Français and his fellow artists, later inspired Jongkind and Claude Monet to open the Impressionist School of St. Simeon at Honfleur in 1862.

His painting, Bois sacré, (Sacred wood) (1864), now at the Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts was heavily criticised, as not up to standard by some observers, who objected to the admittedly dominant, mythical figures at the centre of a realist canvas.

[22] Le Bois sacré was one of a series of popular realism landscapes containing neo-classical themes that Français produced in the 1860s, often from sketches made following an Italian visit such as that to Naples in 1859 and to Pompeii in 1864-5.

[2] He continued to travel extensively throughout his life and in common with many well-off French people would spend his winters in warmer southern climes, after 1873 in Nice, often with his companion Rose Maireau, an engraver who exhibited her work at Petit Palais shortly after it opened in 1900.

[23] In 1878, after six years of intermittent work he completed a series of decorative panels for the font of the new Second Empire church of Sainte-Trinité, Paris[24] The avowed socialism of Français’ youth had receded to that of patriarch of the Third Republic.

An evocation of the upper Loire, the preparatory drawings for which are at the Metropolitan Museum,[26] the finished canvas has a freshness and a poetic naturalism reminiscent of Français’ work in the 1850s.