Camille-Félix Bellanger

Camille-Félix Bellanger was barely 21 when he painted Abel, a canvas more than two metres wide showing the biblical son of Adam killed by his brother Cain. It is now in the Musée d'Orsay. He was then a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, trained by two of the most successful academic painters of the day, Alexandre Cabanel and William Bouguereau, and in 1875 he took second place in the Prix de Rome, the school's top prize for young painters.

His later career followed the official path. He painted mythological and religious subjects, portraits and scenes of everyday life, taught drawing at Saint-Cyr, the French military academy, and in 1896 was appointed an official Painter of the Navy.