Émile Munier specialized in portraying children in all their innocence. Munier’s academic training began with his mentor, Abel Lucas, and he later became a student of his close friend William Bouguereau, the artist who epitomized 19th-century, high-academic art. During the 1870s, Munier met George A. Luca, an important American art agent who lived in Paris and sold many of his prominent clients several of Munier’s finest paintings. The artist enjoyed an extremely successful career, earning medals and honors from not only the Salon, but the Academie des Beaux Arts and the l’Exposition Internationale in Chicago.
