Galerie Paul Prouté

Born in Paris in 1821, François-Léon Bénouville was the younger brother of the landscape painter Jean-Achille Bénouville. A pupil of Léon Cogniet, he was awarded first prize for historical painting in 1845 and stayed at the Académie de France in Rome from 1846 to 1850. Stricken with typhoid fever, he died in 1859 aged just thirty-eight. Despite this short career, Bénouville left behind a substantial body of work. His work, a manifesto of academicism, is preserved in numerous institutional collections, mainly in France and North America.