Alphonse Osbert

Alphonse Osbert trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris alongside Georges Seurat, the future pointillist, and for a time he tried Seurat's dotted technique himself. The painter who really changed his direction was Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, the muralist of calm, pale allegories, and from the late 1880s Osbert turned to Symbolism.

His large canvas Vision, now in the Musée d'Orsay, shows Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, in a landscape bathed in blues, with no attempt to tell her famous defence of the city against Attila. It was exhibited in 1892 and again the following year at the Salon de la Rose+Croix, the showcase of Symbolist painting. In the early 20th century he painted murals, including at least two for the thermal baths at Vichy.