Victor-Ferdinand Bourgeois (August 1, 1870 in Amiens – October 6, 1957 in Dieulefit) was a French painter and illustrator . Life and career From Amiens to Paris Victor-Ferdinand Bourgeois, born in Amiens on 1 August 1870,1 studied at the École Régionale des Beaux-Arts de la Somme and at the Arts Décoratifs in Paris, where he won major prizes. Assessed as hors-concours in 1892, he was appointed to the art directorship of the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres and joined the studio of Luc-Olivier Merson, who had just been elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In the 1894 École des Beaux-Arts competition Bourgeois came first of four hundred students and in 1897 won the Prix Chenavard, enabling him to participate in the Salon des Artistes Français the following year. Here he exhibited La ville d’Amiens recevant les hommages de ses industries. The canvas was immediately acquired by the French government for Amiens Town Hall; this was his first and last public commission, a vast allegorical composition conforming to the iconography and style widely employed in public monuments of the Third Republic. Exhibited at the 1900 Exposition Internationale, it was awarded a bronze medal. Naturalist painter and peintre de Salon In the 1901 Salon Bourgeois exhibited Dur labeur. This imposing canvas of peat diggers is in the naturalist style popularised since the 1870s by Léon Augustin Lhermitte and Jules Bastien-Lepage. He continued in this vein with his Portrait du père de l’artiste en ouvrier, and his most ambitious realist work, the triptych Chez les Chouans, representing the universal themes of youth, family and old age. This portrayal of the peasant world, a representation of the working environment of the farmyard, is a clear departure from the tradition of historical painting. Stay in Etaples An admirer of Jules Breton, Bourgeois was also interested in the world of the sea. He visited Étaples several times, where the port’s hustle and bustle offered him lively subjects, illustrated by canvases such as L’Arrivée du poisson and Retour des pêcheuses de crevettes, exhibited respectively at the 1907 and 1908 Salons. Four years later Gaston Balande was to paint an analogous subject, confirming the attraction of Étaples for naturalist painters. Trip to Switzerland His research into light found new expression in the technique of pastel. He first experimented with this new medium during a trip to Switzerland in the autumn of 1908 where, working outdoors, he produced a radiant