Camille-Léopold Cabaillot-Lassalle 

Biography of Camille-Léopold Cabaillot-Lassalle  ( 1839-1902 )

Son of the painter Louis Simon Cabaillot, Léopold Camille naturally blossomed in an artistic world. First a pupil of his father, he also attended the studio of Pierre-Édouard Frère, the brother of the orientalist painter Théodore Frère, who was to become the founder of the colony of painters of the Écouen school. This school, which advocated a realistic and naturalist style of landscapes and genre scenes, had a great influence on many artists. 

From 1868, the young artist exhibited regularly at the Salon des Artistes Français until his death. Cabaillot-Lassalle was strongly inspired by the social milieu in which he lived, by the elegant and elaborate fashion that flourished under the Second Empire. He specialized in the genre scenes much appreciated by his contemporaries, depicting young bourgeois women and their children at their domestic activities. Far from depicting the lives of peasant women and housewives, as was the case for other artists, Léopold Camille Cabaillot-Lassalle depicted women who take care of their attire, or who stage themselves with elegance in places as diverse as church, museum, stores or garden. 

Cabaillot-Lassalle's work is closely related to that of his Belgian contemporary Alfred Stevens, the most successful painter of the Parisian bourgeoisie. Although the textures of the fabrics are somewhat less precise in Cabaillot-Lassalle's work, there is nevertheless the same attention paid to the rendering of hands, to the opulence of the bourgeois interior, to the atmosphere of a form of luxury expressed by the tapestries, carpets, furniture and clothing.

Already rewarded at the 1866 and 1872 Salons, the painter became very well known thanks to the painting "Le salon de 1874", which the critics seized upon during its presentation at the 1874 Salon. In 1880, he was named Knight of the Legion of Honor and a year later, the state bought him "Rouget de L'Isle singing the Marseillaise" for the Charlieu town hall.
In addition to the Parisian Salons, Cabaillot-Lassalle exhibited in Lyon, Pau, Marseille, Bordeaux and Dijon. He also showed his works in Belgium, notably in 1874 at the XXIXth Triennial Exhibition in Ghent where he exhibited once more the "Salon de 1874".