Paul de Longpré

Born in Lyon, France, in 1855, de Longpré was an entirely self-taught artist who first exhibited his work in 1876 at the age of 21 at the Paris Salon. He moved to New York in 1890, following the failure of a Paris bank, and then to Los Angeles in 1899. His chief subject in painting was flowers. His finest paintings combined scientific knowledge and art through his precise and beautiful depictions of various specimens of flowers – almost exclusively done in watercolors.