Édouard Dubufe

Édouard Dubufe
Édouard Dubufe
	École des Beaux-arts
Known for	Painter (portraits)

Édouard Louis Dubufe (French pronunciation: [edwaʁ lwi dybyf]; 31 March 1819 – 11 August 1883) was a French portrait painter.

Biography

Dubufe was born in Paris. His father was the painter

Salon des Artistes Français

" in 1839.

In 1842, he married Juliette Zimmerman (the daughter of composer and pianist Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmerman) who was a sculptor. The composer Charles Gounod became Édouard's brother-in-law (and lifelong friend) when he married Juliette's sister Anna.^[2] During a stay in England, from 1848 to 1851, Dubufe discovered the great English portrait painters, who he would seek to emulate.

His official career as a portrait painter began in 1853 with portrayals of Emperor

Empress Eugénie. That same year saw the birth of his son Guillaume

, who would also become a well-known painter. In 1855, Juliette died in childbirth.

Dubufe continued to enjoy great success with the aristocracy, receiving a commission from the Emperor to paint the Congress of Paris in 1856.^[1] Later, the Empress asked for his assistance in decorating her "Salon Bleu" at the Tuileries Palace. In April 1866, the journal L'Événement [fr] ran an article by Émile Zola that criticized Dubufe's qualifications for acting as a judge at the Salon and suggested that he belonged to academic cliques that compromised his judgment.^[3]

That same year, Dubufe remarried. He died in

Versailles

in 1883 after a long illness.