Marcellin Desboutin

In 1845, he joined the studio of sculptor Louis-Jules Etex at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then he studied painting for two years under Thomas Couture.

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 interrupted the performances at the Théâtre Français of Maurice de Saxe, a play he had written in collaboration with Jules Amigues.

With the discovery, in a villa in Grasse, of five compositions by Fragonard, Desboutin made five wonderful interpretive drypoints: Surprise, Rendezvous, Confidence, the Lover Crowned and Abandoned.

[2]Back in Paris, he helped found the Second National Society of Fine Arts and celebrated his appointment in the order of the Legion of Honour on 8 June 1895 with two hundred guests presided over by Puvis de Chavannes, in one of his favorite restaurants of Montmartre, giving the toast, "Gentlemen, drink to Manet in painting, in Chabrier music, Villiers and Duranty in literature!

As a writer, Desboutin, besides Maurice of Saxony, is the author of a translation of Byron's Don Juan and of a drama performed in the late 1880s, Madame Roland.