Biographies

Jean-François Raffaëlli (1850 – 1924) Born in Paris, he started his professional career as an actor, but took up painting and studied at the studio of Gérome, exhibiting at the Salon in 1870. He is known as a painter of town and city-scapes, and pictures of ordinary people doing routine things (“genre” paintings). He worked in many media, including engraving, sculpture, and lithography. At the Café Guerbois he met Degas and the Impressionists, exhibiting with them in the early 1880s, because Degas insisted that he be allowed to join in the shows of 1880 and 1881.