Duez, Ernest-Ange's biography

Ernest-Ange Duez was born in Paris on March 8, 1843. In his early twenties, when others had already begun their official artistic training, Duez had “accepted the family decree that he should enter a silk house for business” (C.H. Stranahan, A History of French Painting, New York: Scribner’s & Sons, 1888, pg. 471), where he remained for three years until, at the mature age of twenty-seven, he could no longer push aside his desire to pursue a career as an artist. His training began in the Parisian ateliers of Isidore-Alexandre-Augustin Pils, a well-known Realist painter, and Carolus-Duran, the adopted name for Charles-Auguste-Émile Durand, who became well known for his portraits and led an atelier that produced many successful artists, such as the Americans John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler.