French, 1850-1924 was a French realist painter, sculptor, and printmaker who exhibited with the Impressionists. He was also active as an actor and writer. He was born in Paris, and showed an interest in music and theatre before becoming a painter in 1870. One of his landscape paintings was accepted for exhibition at the Salon in that same year. In October 1871 he began three months of study under Jean-Leon Gerôme at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris; he had no other formal training. Raffaëlli produced primarily costume pictures until 1876, when he began to depict the people of his time particularly peasants, workers, and rag-pickers seen in the suburbs of Paris in a realistic style.
At the caster's (1886), by Jean-Francois Raffaelli
At the caster's (1886), by Jean-François Raffaëlli, oil on canvas, 1m28 x 1m16, Musxe des Beaux-Arts, Lyon. The painting shows the caster Eugxne Gonon (on the left) supervising the casting of the high-relief Mirabeau replying to Dreux-Brxzx by Jules Dalou. A plaster clast of this sculpture was exhibited at the Salon of 1883. The bronze is now at the Palais Bourbon in Paris. cjr