Jean Béraud
1849 - 1935
Jean Béraud was a French Impressionist painter and commercial artist, working during La Belle Époque. Jean Béraud was a skilled documenter of Parisian daily life, which by then, had become a spectacle of display.
After Baron Haussmann's reorganization and expansion of the Parisian boulevards during the 19th mid-century, which created the Paris recognizable today, the great expanses of space constructed, encouraged people to mill about the city, bringing every member of society out from inside their homes. Béraud appreciated and could depict its life in boulevards, cafes, and gardens. He was a perfect Parisian, by sentiment and art, in the exercise of which he painted the most characteristic Parisian types.
He painted in a style that stands somewhere between the academic art of the Salon and that of the Impressionists. While his Impressionist contemporaries were moving out into the country to study the changing effects of the light on the landscape, Béraud remained rooted in Paris, studying the city life and its people.
Jean Béraud was born January 12, 1849 in Saint Petersburg, where his father (also called Jean) was a sculptor, likely working on the site of St. Isaac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg at the time of his son's birth. Béraud's mother, Geneviève Eugénie Jacquin, following the death of Béraud's father moved with the family to Paris. Béraud had been prepared to being educated as a lawyer until the occupation of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, but he became a student of Léon Bonnat.
Béraud exhibited his paintings at the Salon for the first time in 1872. He gained recognition in 1876, with his "On the Way Back from the Funeral". He exhibited with the Society of French Watercolorists at the 1889 World's Fair in Paris. He received the Légion d'honneur in 1894.
Béraud's paintings often included truth based humor and mockery of late 19th century Parisian life, along with frequent appearances of biblical characters in then contemporary situations. Paintings such as "Mary Magdalene in the House of the Pharisees" aroused controversy when exhibited because of these themes.
Towards the end of the 19th century Béraud dedicated less time to his own painting.
Béraud never married and has no children. He is buried in Montparnasse Cemetery beside his mother.
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