Delphin Enjolras 

A French painter and watercolorist, Delphin Enjolras was born in Coucouron, Ardèche, in 1865. He first received a general education at the Notre-Dame-de-France boarding school in Le Puy-en-Velay before turning to art. After moving to Paris, he entered the studio of Gaston Gérard and later studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme, Gustave Courtois, and Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, key figures of late nineteenth-century academic painting.

By the late 1880s, Enjolras was exhibiting regularly at the Salon des Artistes Français, where he presented portraits and interior scenes. In 1889 he received an honorable mention and became a member of the Salon in 1901. He also participated in several regional exhibitions, notably in Nîmes and Avignon, where he lived for part of his life.

His work centers on the female figure, often portrayed in softly lit interiors illuminated by the glow of a lamp or candlelight. These intimate compositions reveal a continuous exploration of the effects of light and the transparency of fabrics. Enjolras excelled in capturing reflections on skin, silk, and glass—an ability that earned him the nickname “the painter of reflections.”

His models—young women reading, sewing, writing, or preparing themselves before a mirror—embody a gentle, contemplative femininity, free from any ostentation. In these works, Enjolras combines the realism inherited from Dagnan-Bouveret with a decorative elegance characteristic of the Belle Époque. His technique, often combining oil, watercolor, and pastel, enhances the delicacy of his chromatic harmonies and the diffuse sensuality of light.

Though rooted in the academic tradition, Enjolras’s art reveals a refined taste for modern intimacy, positioned between symbolism and naturalism. With grace and restraint, he captures the serene domestic atmosphere of the French bourgeois world, evoking a timeless ideal of beauty and tranquility.