Auguste Toulmouche was a French academic painter noted for his idealized portraits of high society women, arrayed in finery and posed, usually full length, amid sumptuous surroundings.
For most of his career, Toulmouche was highly regarded and popular. He studied with Charles Gleyre, to whose atelier he would later recommend the young Claude Monet.
Ironically, it was the revolution in artistic sensibilities brought about by Monet (to whom Toulmouche was a cousin by marriage) and the Impressionist painters (the first three of whom initially met in Gleyre’s studio) that would cause the work of Toulmouche and others in similar genres to fall from critical favor.
