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Marie-Francois Firmin-Girard [French Academic Painter, 1838-1921]

Marie-François Firmin-Girard was born on 29 May 1838 in the village of Poncin, a hamlet in the Ain region of France adjacent to the Swiss border. The landscape is comprised of a surprising variety of terrains from flat marshlands to rich agricultural plains to the Jura mountains. By age sixteen, the ambitious young artist had left his hometown to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Initially he sought out the guidance of Charles Gleyre, the Swiss painter, who offered a traditional visual arts curriculum in an independent studio setting. Later, Firmin-Girard would study with Jean-Léon Gérôme, the academic master of orientalism and anecdotal history paintings.

Throughout his very long career, Firmin-Girard enjoyed considerable commercial and critical approbation. His paintings, routinely shown at the annual Salon for thirty years, received frequent and positive critical attention. In 1874, Les fiancés won a second-class medal; and at the Exposition Universelle of 1900, he was awarded a bronze medal for Le Quai aux Fleurs and Berger d'Onival.

The last decades of Firmin-Girard’s life are less well known. Although his paintings continued to sell very well in commercial galleries and auction houses, he seems to have retired to the countryside at some point in the early twentieth century. Perhaps he felt the need to escape from yet another war between France and Germany as World War I began its downward spiral into ever-increasing horror; or perhaps he simply felt it was time to return to a quieter life outside of Paris. Whatever his reasons, Firmin-Girard moved to the small town of Montluçon in the Auvergne region, and probably not coincidentally, far south of the fighting in the north. He died there at age 83 in 1921.