Édouard Sain

In the summer of 1864 Édouard Sain reached Capri, after months in Rome and Naples, where he had drawn Vesuvius and visited the ruins of Pompeii. That journey gave him his best-known picture, Excavations at Pompeii, painted in 1865 and now in the Musée d'Orsay. It shows a group of barefoot women carrying baskets on their heads across the dig.

Born in Cluny in Burgundy, Sain trained at the Valenciennes academy and then in Paris under the history painter François-Édouard Picot. He won Salon medals in 1866 and 1875, and Italian scenes, many set on Capri, filled his work for years. From the late 1870s he turned almost entirely to portraits and female nudes. In 1879 he published his memories of the trip as a book, Souvenirs d'Italie.