THE EVERYDAY LIFE OF A GENTLEMAN

Painter of historical and military subjects, scenes from everyday life, genre scenes, portraits, designs for tapestries and landscapes; illustrator.

André Brouillet was born on September 1, 1857 in Charroux as the son of the sculptor Pierre Amédée Brioullet. Although he was admitted to the engineering course at the Ecole Centrale in 1876, he chose to switch after three years, in 1979, to the École des Beaux-Arts, where he studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme and then, in 1880, under Jean-Paul Laurens. Brouillet exhibited from 1979 on at the Salon, where he won an honorable mention in 1881, a third class medal in 1884 and a second class medal the following year. He was trained in an academic style and mainly painted genre scenes, portraits and landscapes. Most famous, however, was his group portrait “Une leçon clinique à la Salpêtrière”, a rendering of a clinical lesson by Jean-Martin Charcot treating a hysterical woman, Marie “Blanche” Wittman, with hypnosis. The audience included Joseph Babinski, Charcot’s assistant, Georges Gilles de la Tourette, Théodule Ribot, Paul Richer, Jules Claretie and other prominent doctors. The Swedish writer Per Olov Enquist was inspired by the painting for his novel “Blanche en Marie” (2004).

Later in his career, Brouillet would paint many orientalist works. He traveled to Tunisia several times.

Brouillet also worked as an illustrator for Paris Illustré and Figaro Illustré and was also a designer of cartons for tapestries and an illustrator of books, including some of Guy de Maupassant and Paul Bourget.

In 1906 he was admitted to the Légion d’honneur. He died of a stroke on December 6, 1914, aged 57.