Timoleon Marie Lobrichon

Timoléon Marie Lobrichon was a student of François-Edouard Picot at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Lobrichon’s particular specialty was painting babies and children, either alone or with their parents in genre settings.

From 1859, Lobrichon exhibited regularly at the Salon. He showed mainly genre scenes, such as a painting of a young girl with a soldier doll, entitled Premiere Amour, included in the Salon of 1872. He won the first place medal at the Salon of 1868, and also contributed to exhibitions in Germany and Australia. Lobrichon's talent for depicting children with great charm and appeal led to several of his works being used as advertisements in magazines of the period. Similarly, in 1884, Lobrichon was commissioned to provide illustrations for Jean Aicard's book La Chanson de l'Enfant.

Though he was justly celebrated as a painter of children, his work was not entirely limited to such subjects. A large horizontal canvas of The Birth of Spring from 1864 was almost certainly intended for a decorative scheme in a Parisian hôtel particulier, as was an oval painting of An Allegory of the Dawn, dated 1875. Paintings by Lobrichon are in the collections of the museums of Besançon, Chalons-sur-Marne, Limoges and Mulhouse, as well as in the New Orleans Museum of Art.