Pierre Félix Masseau

In 1897 he was awarded the Prix de Paris which allowed him to travel to the Netherlands, Switzerland, and also to Belgium and Italy (eight months in Florence).

It made him a recognized and respected artist by his style and his technical mastery in various material bronze, original patinas, wood, glass, and stone ware.

An original character of his (a "Mephistophelian" look), being almost reclusive in his art, Fix-Masseau is the very image of the total artist, mystical, focussed and concentrated.

In 1894 Le Sécret a tall female mystical figure, holding up a box, her face receded almost behind it, like her naked body under a half opened coat.

It shows a young woman as a personification of the human soul appearing to be haunted by five heads personifying passions: lust, anger, greed, attachment, and vanity.

At Herqueville, his residence outside Paris in the Normandy, he befriended Louis Renault, the famous car engineer and pioneering entrepreneur.

In his later years, he produced a number of masks and busts for Frédéric Chopin and Charles Baudelaire, as well as numerous medals mostly as commissions for notable Parisian physicians of his time.