He was also a teacher; in his twenties he established his own atelier in Paris, with pupils including his two younger brothers, Robert-Léopold and Pierre-Gustave,[1] as well as Eugène Lepoittevin and Nicolas Alexandre Barbier.

[5][6] Alexandre du Sommerard, who became one of his patrons, indicates that Xavier was essentially a self-taught artist, saying his early paintings were created "almost without any other guide than nature.

Moving beyond pastoral subjects, Leprince also painted marine art, scenes of Parisian life, works in the troubadour style, portraits, and the Forest of Fontainebleau, which had just begun to attract a new generation of French artists.

He also specialized in painting the human figures for a number of landscape painters, including Nicolas Alexandre Barbier,[19][20] Étienne Bouhot,[21] Alexandre-Hyacinthe Dunouy,[22] André Giroux,[23][24] Charles-Caïus Renoux,[25] and Henri Édouard Truchot [fr].

[26][27] This practice of being a "general contractor" to artists "who do not have the courage to study the figures of men or animals to adorn their works" was criticized by one writer, who argued that it would surely "detach many jewels from his crown in public esteem."

[citation needed] By 1822, the year Leprince turned 23, his talents as a painter had attracted the patronage of the antiquarian Alexandre du Sommerard, whose collection of medieval art and artifacts would become the Musée de Cluny.

[35] The book, an illustrated tour of medieval churches and abbeys, many of them reduced to ruins in the violence of the French Revolution, was part of an artistic and literary movement, the troubadour style, that romanticized the Middle Ages in France.

The other depicted an elderly collector conferring with a Jewish antiques dealer and surrounded by prized artifacts from his collection, entitled L’Antiquaire (The Antiquarian).

It is M. Renoux who was commissioned to complete this interior," consisting of furniture, armor, and numerous objets d'art from the Middle Ages; "finally everything comes together to make this painting a precious piece.

They presumably included not just some of the main artists of the neighbourhood, but also no doubt prominent officials and collectors…The ambitious studio interior with some thirty figures which Leprince painted the year he died was a commemorative portrait of the three brothers and their immediate circle designed to impress, but also with an element of humour.

When it was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1827, the catalogue noted: "Of the thirty figure-portraits included in the composition, nineteen had been completed by Mr. Xavier Leprince before his premature death; the eleven others and various details are by the hand of Mr. Eugène Potdevin [sic].

In the estate sale that followed his death, one lot was described as "fifty lithographed pieces, comprising the complete work of everything M. X. Leprince has executed in lithography.

[50] The book was a popular success (the entry at worldcat.org notes a fifth edition), and was followed a year later by the fanciful Jeux des jeunes filles de tous les pays (Games of Young Girls of All Countries).

[52] A touch of ribaldry at once realistic and fanciful can be seen in Le depart de la Diligence; off to one side, a male passenger renders the artist's signature and the date by urinating against a wall.

Jacques Arago wrote, "Shall we not put, next to our most caustic creators, Henry Monnier and Xavier Leprince, to whom caricature owes its most biting productions?

The comedy Inconvéniens d'un Voyage en Diligence premiered at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris on Saturday, 11 November 1826, six weeks before Leprince's death.

A black and white photograph of a self-portrait by Leprince is in the Frick Digital Collections; the location and date of the original painting are unknown.

With the publication of Inconvéniens d'un Voyage en Diligence, and his work on major commissions from du Sommerard, 1826 was a busy and productive year for Leprince, but at some point he became ill.

"[71] Leprince's works testify to strong fraternal and paternal ties, a high-spirited sense of humor, immense energy, and expansive talents.

"[76] Gustave Leprince showed a number of landscapes at the Paris Salon from 1831 to 1837, but his career, like that of his oldest brother, was cut short by an early death (in 1837, at age twenty-six or twenty-seven).

Léopold Leprince enjoyed considerable success as a landscape painter, exhibited works at the Paris Salon from 1822 to 1844, and had paintings acquired by a number of French museums, including three at the Louvre.

Tormented by the thought, mature beyond his years, 'that a name too soon famous is a heavy burden,' he felt the need to strengthen his natural talents by continual and perhaps too constant study, in the hope of satisfying both the taste of art-lovers and the more demanding expectations of the masters of art.

"[77] A generation after his death, Leprince would be remembered as "one of the most elegant painters of the 19th century school,"[78] and in 1886 Paul Marmottan would declare him a "great artist" possessing a talent "very spirited, very French.

"[79] The 1904 edition of Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers would note that Leprince's "village fairs, carnivals, corps de garde, and a great variety of other subjects are to be found in some of the best collections.

"[80] The art historian Henry Marcel found Leprince's work akin to that of Boilly, "but with a greater variety of motifs and a more lively style.