19th Century French

The son of Alexandre Valbrun and Cécile Morisot—a great-aunt of Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)— Alexis Valbrun was orphaned at the age of two and fostered by a member of his mother’s family, with whom he spent his childhood and youth.

He trained with the painters Nicolas Gosse (1787-1878) and Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835), from whom he learned the precision of drawing and the use of bright, contrasting colours, as well as the keys to the genre of aristocratic portraiture, which would eventually become one of his specialities. In 1817 he enrolled at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts of Paris to further his training.

In 1824 Valbrun was chosen to take part in the , a scholarship awarded by the French Government to outstanding Fine Arts students which was considered the highest distinction an artist could aspire to at that time. In 1831 he made his debut at the , at which he would become a regular participant until 1843, when he presented La mort de Saphire, one of his seminal works.

His final years were marked by poverty. With five children from his first marriage and eight from his second (two of his sons and several grandsons would become artists), he suffered tremendous financial hardship. Despite his poor health, from 1838 until his death he continued working to provide for his family, creating commissions with religious subject matters for churches as well as sets for the opera and theatre in Paris. Valbrun died on 2 March 1852 in Paris at the age of forty-nine.