He studied at the Académie Julian, followed by Jean-Paul Laurens and Fernand Cormon at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and had his first exhibition at the Salon in 1910. He styled himself as an ethnographic painter and took part in many missions to North Africa; notably to the area around the Hoggar Mountains. He presented the works he created there at the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931, the Brussels International Exposition (1935), the Exposition Universelle (1937) and the 1939 New York World's Fair.