Background
Auguste Toulmouche was born on September 21, 1829 in Nantes, France, to Emile Toulmouche, a prosperous broker, and Rose Sophie Mercier.
Auguste Toulmouche was born on September 21, 1829 in Nantes, France, to Emile Toulmouche, a prosperous broker, and Rose Sophie Mercier.
Auguste Toulmouche studied drawing and sculpture locally with the sculptor Amedee Menard and painting with the portraitist Biron before moving to Paris in 1846 to study with the painter Charles Gleyre. He was said to be one of Gleyre's favoured students.
Auguste Toulmouche exhibited his first paintings at the Paris Salon in 1848 when he was just 19. He exhibited again in 1849 and 1850, by which time he has begun to specialize in portraits.
Toulmouche painted in an idealizing version of the dominant academic realist style, and his subjects were frequently Parisian women who belonged to the upper bourgeoisie. During the 1860s, Toulmouche refined his style, and began exploring more complex compositional structures.
His work "The Hesitant Fiancee" was possibly exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1866 and also at the Exposition Universelle of 1867 in Paris, France.
In 1870, Toulmouche joined one of the battalions defending Paris against the German invasion in the Franco-Prussian War. After the war ended, he spent more time at the Abbey of Blanche Couronne near Nantes, which was part of a large estate inherited by his wife on the death of her father. He built a workshop on the abbey grounds and invited many Parisian friends to spend time there, including Genevieve Halevy, Jose-Maria de Heredia, Paul Baudry, Elie Delaunay, Ernest Reyer, and the young Ignacy Jan Paderewski.
Toulmouche died suddenly on October 16, 1890 in Paris, France, following an episode of syncope. He is buried at Montparnasse Cemetery.
The Reluctant Bride
Reading Lesson
The Letter
Vanity
The Ticket
The New Arrival
The Admiring Glance
An Exotic Beauty in an Interior
An Elegant Beauty
Consolation
A Classical Courtship
A Young Woman in a Rose Garden
The Lost Love
Preparing For The Ball
The Love Letter
Admiring Herself
Watering the Flowers
Young Woman In An Interior
The Kiss
Sweet Doing Nothing
An Afternoon Idyll
Five Minutes Late
La Toilette
In 1861 Auguste Toulmouche married Marie Lecadre, the daughter of Nantes lawyer Alphonse Henri Lecadre. By this marriage, he became a cousin of the painter Claude Monet.