The French fin-de-siecle artist Jules Flandrin was a pupil of Gustave Moreau, one of the most prominent figures in the mid-to-late 19th-century art world. His studio was a meeting place for some of the most influential avant-garde artists of the 20th century - Matisse, Albert Marquet and Georges Rouault, artists who shaped our ideas of modern art. Flandrin was a major force amongst these innovators. Widely shown in the French capital in the first years of the new century, on the eve of World War I he was hailed as a torchbearer of l'art vivant."