(b Bordeaux, 21 Aug. 1807; d Menton, 18 Nov. 1876). French painter, born of Spanish parents who had settled in France as political refugees. He began his career (c.1823) as a colourist in a porcelain factory and took up painting in the late 1820s, first exhibiting at the Salon in 1831. His early paintings included scènes galantes, imaginative oriental subjects, and still lifes, usually small in size and rich in colour and texture, but after meeting Théodore Rousseau in 1836 he became a member of the Barbizon School of landscape painters. Stylistically, however, he stood somewhat apart from his Barbizon colleagues: his liking for melodramatic lighting contrasts with the sense of quiet communion with nature that was typical of the group and his restless brushwork remained highly distinctive.