Jean-François Raffaëlli

Jean-François Raffaëlli (1850 - 1924) was a French realist painter, sculptor, and printmaker. In October 1871 he began three months of study under Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris; he had no other formal training. Raffaëlli produced primarily costume pictures until 1876, when he began to depict the people of his time—particularly peasants, workers, and ragpickers seen in the suburbs of Paris—in a realistic style.