Le monde doux et joli - illustrations by Pierre Brissaud

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Pierre Brissaud (23 December 1885, Paris - 17 October 1964, Paris), French illustrator, painter, and engraver. The son of a doctor, he trained at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Atelier Fernand Cormon. Students of the atelier drew, painted and designed wallpaper, furniture and posters; earlier, Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh, and Matisse had studied and worked there. Among his fellow students there was his older brother Jacques who would go on to become a portrait and genre painter. Their  uncle Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel was a well-known illustrator whose son, their first cousin, was the celebrated artist and celebrity portrait painter Bernard Boutet de Monvel.

Brissaud is known for his pochoir prints for the fashion magazine Gazette du Bon Ton. His best-known illustrations are veritable genre scenes illustrating the designs of Paris fashion houses such as Lanvin, Chéruit, Worth, and Doucet. His illustrations would also appear in Vogue, House & Garden, and Fortune, and in books like Madame Bovary, Manon Lescaut, the memoirs of Saint-Simon, the autobiographical novels of Anatole France, and many others. In 1907 he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne.

Three small boys in sailor suits - paintings by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel

Portrait of a Young Boy Wearing a Sailor Suit, 1884.

Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel (18 October 1850, Orléans – 16 March 1913, Paris), French painter and illustrator, best known for his watercolors for children's books, and the father of the painter Bernard Boutet de Monvel. Wikipedia has a rather exhaustive/exhausting entry on the artist, so I'll think I'll pass the biographical work off to them.

Bernard and Roger, at the château de Vineuil at Bourré, 1883.

This odd and charming double portrait shows the artist's two sons, two-year-old Bernard - later a famous artist in his own right - and Roger, aged four. It was painted while the family was vacationing at the château de Vineuil - at Bourré in the Loir-et-Cher département of central France - which belonged to madame Boutet de Monvel's cousin, the photographer Louis Rousselet.The two boys look to be posing under great duress, just waiting - stiffly, impatiently; the younger one decidely pouting - until given the all-clear to run off and play.