20.04 1850 – 11.02 1924

Jean-Francois Raffaelli was born on April 20, 1850 in Paris.

Rafaelli attended the School of Fine Arts, the workshop of Jean-Leon Gerome. The artist gained fame as a master of genre paintings, cityscapes. The heroes of Raffaelli’s paintings are people from the poor suburbs of Paris. In his creations, Rafaelli shows neither splendor nor luxury. This trend can be traced both in the choice of the heroes of the paintings, and in the choice of landscapes. And if the artist depicts the central streets of Paris or a wealthy man, he still strives for simplicity.

Rafaelli experienced a strong influence of impressionists, even participated in several of their exhibitions. However, “colleagues in the shop” criticized him for superficiality.

The artist was friendly with Edgar Degas and learned from him a runaway manner of writing. Seeing that impressionism is not suitable for expressing his ideas, Jean-François Raffaelli developed his own creative method. The artist greatly diluted the oil paints, which made it possible to get a kind of “watercolor effect”.

In addition to genre works and landscapes, Jean-Francois Raffaelli created portraits of his contemporaries. Another direction of the artist’s creative activity was color engraving. It is with the name of Jean-François Raffaelli attributed to the revival of this technique.