Alexandre Cabanel

Alexandre Cabanel, who died in 1889, was born at Montpellier in 1823. He began painting as a pupil of Picot, in the old classical manner, but soon adopted a more modern and natural style of his own. After carrying off the Prix de Rome in 1845, he took medal after medal, was made an Officer of the Legion of Honor and a Member of the Institute of France. His pictures are to be found in all the European museums and many of our own, and in every private collection of note in America and abroad; and his decorative paintings in the Louvre and other public buildings are among the masterpieces of that art. He was also a portrait painter of the first order, especially of women, and no small part of his large fortune came to him from his commissions in this line, many of his sitters being Americans. "Phadra" was painted by him in 1880, and the original picture is in the collection of Mr. John T. Martin, of Brooklyn, N.Y.