# Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Baudry, Paul Jacques Aimé

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​BAUDRY, Paul Jacques Aimé, a French painter, born at Bourbon, Vendée, Nov. 7, 1828. His father was an artisan, burdened with a numerous family. He educated his son as best he could, and even had him taught music. But a humble teacher of drawing, named Sartoris, detected and developed in the boy another faculty. At that time the prefect of Vendée chanced to be M. Gauja, an ex-contributor to the National. a friend of M. Thiers, and a lover of painting. This gentleman took an interest in Baudry, and helped to get for him a small allowance from the Department to enable him to study at Paris. The lad very speedily distinguished himself at the École des Beaux Arts. He leaped from success to success, he carried off the grand prix de Rome in 1850, the subject being "Zenobia discovered on the banks of the Araxes." In the Salon of 1857 he exhibited "The Punishment of a Vestal," "Fortune and the Child," "Leda," and a portrait of M. Beulé. His reputation was now firmly established. Subsequently he exhibited "The Penitent Magdalen," "The Toilet of Venus," "Guillemette," three portraits, 1859; "Charlotte Corday," "Amphitrite," several portraits, including those of M. Guizot (belonging to Sir John Boileau), M. Charles Dupin, Mademoiselle Madeleine Brohan, and the son of Madame la Comtesse Swicytowska, 1861; "The Pearl and the Wave" (a Persian fable), and two portraits, 1863; "Diana" and a portrait, 1865; and the portrait of M. Charles Garnier, the architect, 1869. But M. Baudry is best known by the magnificent pictures he executed for the decoration of the foyer of the new Opera House at Paris. His intimate friend, M. Edmond About, says:—"When the architect Charles Garnier proceeded to allot the works, he intrusted the voussures of the foyer to Baudry, who had already executed important decorative works at the Hôtel Fould and elsewhere. The commission, like all State commissions, was neither well nor ill paid at the price of 140,000 francs. But when the artist learned that there was a talk of giving the ceilings and the spaces above the doors to another, he offered to paint tho whole himself without increase of pay, thus reducing his reward to 280 francs per superficial mètre; tho work occupies 500 mètres square. Before drawing his first sketch, he made two journeys, one to London, and the other to Rome. At the Kensington Museum he copied the seven Cartoons of Raphael. At the Vatican he copied eleven enormous morsels of Michael Angelo, all to endue himself with the spirit of the masters, and to catch for himself le bon pli. That done, there only remained to shut himself for eight ​years in the damp building of the rising Opera-house. There he occupied three studios, one on the sixth storey, another on the tenth, and the last quite at the top, under the cupola, whence neither cold nor heat could dislodge him. His whole life was there. He slept and ate in a loge de danseuse, furnished with his student's furniture. He lived whole months without seeing any other faces than those of his models and the old housekeeper, and very occasionally a friend." In 1870 he was elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts. M. Baudry was decorated with the Legion of Honour in 1861, and was raised to the rank of Commander in March, 1875.