Background
The son of a well-known doctor, FJ Cazin (1788–1864), he was born at Samer, Pas-de-Calais.
The son of a well-known doctor, FJ Cazin (1788–1864), he was born at Samer, Pas-de-Calais.
After studying in France, he went to England, where he was strongly influenced by the pre-Raphaelite movement. His chief earlier pictures have a religious interest, shown in such examples as The Flight into Egypt (1877), or Hagar and Ishmael (1880, Luxembourg). And afterwards his combination of luminous landscape with figure-subjects (Souvenir de fête, 1881.
Journée faite, 1888) gave him a wide repute, and made him the leader of a new school of idealistic subject-painting in France.
In 1890, Theodore Child discussed a few of his paintings (including a series of five paintings depicting the story of Judith and Holofernes) in Harper"s Magazine. He painted a scene from The Odyssey, Ulysses after the Shipwreck.
His charming and poetical treatment of landscape is the feature in his tonalism painting which in later years has given them an increasing value among connoisseurs.