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A self-portrait of Eugène Delacroix Photo sourced from

15 Famous French Painters you should know About 

Art as we know it started a very long time ago and countries like France were some of the first people to start doing art. As far as painting is concerned it has a long and rich history in France because, throughout history, the country’s rulers have fostered all forms of art and related traditions.

From the earliest Roman murals to Gothic panel paintings, stained glass, and frescoes in the Middle Ages, French painting evolved before adopting the Renaissance styles of Italian painters. Let’s take a look at some of the country’s most famous painters one should know about;

1. Eugène Delacroix 

A self-portrait of Eugène Delacroix Photo sourced from

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix born on 26th April 1798 and died on 13th August 1863 was a French Romantic artist, painter, and moralist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.

He manipulated expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of color profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. He is one of the most renowned French painters.

Read more about him in Top 10 Outstanding Facts About Eugene Delacroix

2. Edouard Manet 

Edouard Manet born on 23 January 1832 and died on 30 April 1883 was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

He is one of the most influential people in the French art world and many artists have used his style in their works. He formed bonds with other great artists of the time and he developed his simple and direct style that would be heralded as innovative and serve as a major influence for future painters.

3. Claude Monet 

Aphoto of the French impressionist painter Claude Monet Photo sourced from

Oscar-Claude Monet born on 14 November 1840 and died on 5 December 1926 was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting. He is regarded as a significant forerunner of modernism, particularly for his efforts to depict nature as he saw it.

He was the most persistent and prolific landscape painter to use impressionism’s theory of expressing one’s perceptions before nature throughout his lengthy career and became one of the most sought-after painters from France.

Read more about him here

4. Auguste Renoir 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir born on 25th February 1841 and died on 3rd December 1919 was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. His paintings are examples of well-done French artwork.

As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, he is often known as the final representative of a tradition that runs directly from Rubens to Watteau. He was also the father of several known names in the film industry.

5. Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas born on 19 July 1834 and died on 27 September 1917 was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and their portrayal of human isolation.

Degas is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. Although Degas is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist, and did not paint outdoors as many Impressionists did.

Read more about it in 10 Remarkable Facts about Edgar Degas

6. Camille Pissarro

A portrait of Camille Pissarro Photo sourced from

Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro born on 10 July 1830 and died on 13 November 1903 was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies).

He is famously known for his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. His works display an empathy for peasants and laborers and sometimes evidence his radical political leanings. His contribution to French art will always make him relevant when it comes to art.

7. Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne born on 19 January 1839 and died on 22 October 1906 was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work pioneered new modalities of representation and impacted avant-garde creative movements of the early 20th century.

Cézanne built the link between the late 19th-century impression and the new field of artistic inquiry known as cubism in the early 20th century. He used planes of color and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields in his paintings.

8. Georges Braque

Georges Braque born on 13th May 1882 and died on 31st August 1963 was a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1905

He is also mostly known as the father of Cubism because of the role he played in the development of Cubism. Braque stenciled letters onto paintings, blended pigments with sand, and copied wood grain and marble to achieve great levels of dimension in his paintings.

Read more about it here

9. Gustave Courbet

Portrait of Gustave Courbet Photo sourced from

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet born on 10th June 1819 and died on 31st December 1877 was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. He is regarded as one of the best French painters to have ever existed.

He disregarded academic convention and the Romanticism of the preceding generation of visual artists because he was dedicated to painting simply what he could see. Later artists like the Impressionists and Cubists looked to his independence as a model, and they were greatly influenced.

10. Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur born on 16th March 1822 and died on 25th May 1899 was a French artist known best as a painter of animals. She also made sculptures in a realist style. Bonheur was widely considered to be the most famous female painter of the nineteenth century.

Rosa Bonheur’s liberal outlook, defiant personality, and technical mastery made her the foremost landscape and animal painter in the French. She is one of the best female artists that ever existed.

11. Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin born on June 1594 –and died on 19 November 1665 was a leading French painter of the classical French Baroque style who spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were based on religious and mythological subjects painted for a small group of Italian and French collectors.

In his later years, he gave growing prominence to the landscape in his paintings. Most of his works are characterized by clarity, logic, and order, and favor line over color. Until the 20th century, he remained a major inspiration for many classically-oriented french artists.

12. Charles Le Brun 

Charles Le Brun born on 24th February 1619 and died on 12 February 1690 was a French painter, art theorist, interior decorator, and director of several art schools of his time. He served as a court painter to Louis XIV, who declared him “the greatest French artist of all time”.

He was a dominant figure in 17th-century French craft. He was a founding member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648, and in 1663 he became Manager of the Gobelins Manufacture. He oversaw much of the royal furniture.

13. Camille Corot

Self-portrait of Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot with palette in hand Photo sourced from

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot famously known as Camille Corot born on July 16, 1796, and died on February 22, 1875, was a French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching.

A pivotal figure in landscape painting, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot was an influential and prolific artist, producing over 3,000 works during his lifetime, and inspiring countless numbers of forgeries and copies.

14. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec born on 24th November 1864 and died on 9th September 1901 was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator who produced a collection of enticing, elegant, and provocative images of the sometimes decadent affairs of those times.

His most famous works include depictions of the colorful, lively, and sometimes decadent lives of Â鶹APPians during the 19th century. During his 20-year career, he produced almost 1000 paintings, countless drawings, and even ceramics and stained glassworks.

15. Georges Seurat

Georges Pierre Seurat born on 2nd December 1859 and died on 29 March 189 was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conté crayon for drawings on paper with a rough surface.

He is best known for developing the Pointillist style which involves painting with distinct dots of color, which are meticulously applied in patterns to compose a cohesive image. Seurat’s large-scale masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte remains a leading example of this style.