Louise Abbéma 

Louise Abbéma is a French painter, engraver, illustrator and sculptor.
She is known for her portraits of Parisian personalities and genre scenes.

Louise Abbéma trained with the history painter Louis Devédeux (1820-1874), then became a pupil of the artists : Charles Chaplin (1825-1891), Jean-Jacques Henner (1829-1905) and Carolus-Duran (1837-1917).

By the age of twenty-three, she had made a name for herself with a portrait of Sarah Bernhardt painted in 1875, followed by portraits of the artist Jean-Jacques Henner, the entrepreneur and diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps and the opera architect Charles Garnier. Sarah Bernhardt (his companion) sculpted a marble bust of Louise Abbéma in 1878.

She was one of the official painters of the splendours of the Third Republic, demonstrating her great mastery in the execution of decorative panels in Paris, for the Opéra-Comique, the Hôtel de Ville and the town halls of the VIIth, Xth and XXth arrondissements.

In 1881, she received an honourable mention at the Salon des artistes français, where she exhibited regularly until 1926. In 1890, she exhibited a painting entitled Le Japon at the first Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux Arts.

She was a member of the delegation of French women artists presented at the 1893 Universal Exhibition in Chicago, grouped in the Woman's Building, while also exhibiting at the Fine-Arts Palace in Chicago.