Jules Rousset (1840-1921) - Portrait of young woman with blue eyes

Jules ROUSSET
(Aillant-sur-Milleron, 1840 – ?, 1921)

Portrait of young woman with blue eyes

Oil on canvas
Signed on the right
56 x 46cm

Son of Henry Rousset, winegrower in Auxerre, Jules was born on March 25, 1840 in Aillant-sur-Milleron in Loiret, halfway between Gien and Auxerre.

Pupil of Jules Quantin, Léon Cogniet and Isidore Pils at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1867 until 1894. He was also present at the regional Salon of Blois in the same years.
Jules Rousset practiced portrait, still life and naturalist painting without departing from drawing. Indeed, he also produced regularly, and in parallel with his paintings, watercolors either landscapes or portraits which he also presented at the various Salons.

Member of the Society of French Artists, he lived mainly in Auxerre and Paris. He is known to have lived in Rome for at least five years around 1874.

The artist belatedly married on October 31, 1895 in Boulogne-Billancourt to Louise Thierry, fifteen years his junior.

He is now commonly presented as an orientalist, which is not the case. It is actually a patronymic confusion with his contemporary the painter Paul Rousset who presented him with Orientalist paintings at the Salon in the 1890s.

Jules Rousset, who died in 1921, is present today in the museums of Orléans and Auxerre.