Teodoro Duclère

His father, Jacques-François Théodore Duclère, born around 1788, was from Seine-et-Marne, France, and came to Italy during the Napoleonic Wars.

He met and married Teodoro's future mother, Costanza Lepori, in Rome and they settled in Naples, where he took a job as a customs officer.

[1] He was attracted to the arts at an early age, and began by sitting in on lessons at the studios of the Dutch-born painter, Anton Sminck van Pitloo.

When he was old enough, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, where Van Pitloo was appointed to the landscape painting chair.

In 1861, he became a member of the Academy, largely upon the recommendation of Eugenio Emanuele di Savoia-Villafranca [it], an aide to King Victor Emmanuel II, who wanted to purge public institutions of those who had opposed Italian unification.