Jean Béraud was a French painter renowned for his numerous paintings depicting the life of Paris, and the nightlife of Paris society.
Pictures of the Champs Elysees, cafés, Montmartre and the banks of the Seine are precisely detailed illustrations of everyday Parisian life during the “Belle Époque”.
Born in St Petersburg, Béraud moved with his family to Paris after the death of his sculptor father. From 1871 he studied under Léon Bonnat. He worked initially as a portrait painter, turning at the end of the 1870s to depictions of daily Parisian life and genre scenes painted in a naturalist style.
In the 1890s he started to paint religious scenes set in contemporary settings. He exhibited at the Salon until 1889, and was a founding member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, where he exhibited from 1890 to 1929.
