Couple au bar a Villefranche sur Mer by Edmond Picard, peintre (1861-1899)

Edmond Picard, painter (1861-1899)

Born into a Bisontine family, he showed an early talent for drawing, entering the Besançon municipal drawing school at the age of thirteen in 1873.

There, he was taught by painter Honoré Chapuis, before being noticed by landscape artist Alexandre Rapin, who convinced his family to train in Paris.

Picard first joined the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, then Léon Gérôme and Jean Paul Laurens.
He exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1881. Four years later, he won the prestigious "Troyon" prize for animal painting, becoming one of the youngest artists to achieve this distinction.

During the 1880s and 1890s, Edmond Picard established himself as a painter deeply committed to depicting everyday life. He was just as interested in rural scenes as he was in urban or genre subjects, demonstrating an attentive and sensitive observation of the society of his time.

From 1890 onwards, his style evolved towards a more assertive naturalism, marked by a greater search for emotional truth and a particular concern for atmospheric rendering.

Among his most famous works, Les Adieux du marin (1893) perfectly illustrates this artistic maturity and his taste for compositions imbued with great humanity.

Alongside his career as a painter, Picard played an active role in the artistic life of his region. In 1893, he founded the Union comtoise des arts décoratifs and taught at the École municipale des Beaux-Arts in Besançon, helping to train a new generation of artists from the Franche-Comté region.