Same as Albert Besnard. Paul-Albert Besnard (2 June 1849 – 4 Dec. 1934); French painter and printmaker. Born in Paris; studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, studied with Jean Bremond and was influenced by Alexandre Cabanel. He won the Prix de Rome in 1874 with the painting Death of Timophanes. Until about 1880 he followed the academic tradition, but then broke away completely, and devoted himself to the study of color and light as conceived by the Impressionists. The realism of this group never appealed to his bold imagination, but he applied their technical method to ideological and decorative works on a large scale, such as his frescoes at the Sorbonne, the Ecole de Pharmacie, the ceiling of the Comédie-Française (Paris), the Salle des Sciences at the Hôtel de Ville, the mairie of the 1st arrondissement, and the chapel of Berck hospital, for which he painted 12 Stations of the Cross in an entirely modern spirit. A great virtuoso, he achieved brilliant successes alike in watercolor, pastel, oil and etching, both in portraiture, in landscape and in decoration. His close analysis of light can be studied in his picture La femme qui se chauffe at the Luxembourg in Paris, one of a large group of nude studies of which a later example is Une Nymphe au bord de la mer; and in the work produced during and after a visit to India in 1911. A large panel, Peace by Arbitration, was completed 7 days before the outbreak of war in 1914. Partly under the influence of Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds, whom he studied during a 3-year stay in England, he applied his methods to a brilliant series of portraits, especially of women. Notable among these are the Portrait de Théâtre (Madame Réjane), and Mme. Roger Jourdain. The former is a good example of his daring unconventionality... A symbolist in his decorative work Besnard's frank delight in the external world and his “chic” luminous technique bring him close to the... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul-Albert_Besnard) undefined

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