six years of intermittent work he completed a series of decorative panels for the font of the new Second Empire church of Sainte-Trinité, Paris The avowed socialism of Français’ youth had receded to that of patriarch of the Third Republic. Also in 1878 Le Mont Cervin et Le Lac de Némi (The Matterhorn and the Lake of Némi) was awarded the Médaille d'honneur at the Paris Salon. A year after in 1879 Français was a founding member of the Société d'aquarellistes français (Society of French Watercolourists), the aim of which was to exhibit the watercolour paintings of the members, initially limited to just forty. The Society ceased in 1896. At the 1884 Salon, he exhibited L'Étang de Clisson (Forest of Clisson) following a visit to the Loire valley. An evocation of the upper Loire, the preparatory drawings for which are at the Metropolitan Museum, the finished canvas has a freshness and a poetic naturalism reminiscent of Français’ work in the 1850s. One of his most successful later paintings is Vue d'Antibes (1894) where he returned with some effect to the landscapes and skies of Corot and Millet. Français entered his final decade as a man with a considerable artistic reputation. In 1890 he was the first landscape artist to be elected to the Chair of the Académie Française, the same year he won the Médaille d'honneur at the Société des Artistes Français where he exhibited two landscapes. He had international recognition which eluded many French artists. He exhibited at Geneva in 1857, 1858 and 1861 and in London in 1862 and 1874. Following his death a rather grand memorial was erected to his memory at Plombières-les-Bains. His former studio in Plombières is now the Musée Louis Français François-Louis Français died in Plombières on 18 May 1897. Notes Bibliography Aimee Gros (Paris, 1902): François-Louis Français :Causeries et souvenirs par un de ses élèves Tradition and Revolution in French Art 1700 -1880: Painting and Drawings from Lille (exh.cat., London, National Gallery. 1993) François-Louis Français, Plombières-les-Bains, 1814-1897 : Illustrateur romantique (exh.cat., by R.Conilleau) Aquarelles, dessins et gravures de François-Louis Français (exh.cat, Région Lorraine, 1982–3) P. Miquel (1975), Le Paysage Français ay XIXe siècle 1824 – 1874 : L’Ecole de la Nature, iii (Maurs-la-Jolie), pages 608-645 H. Chisholm, ed. (1911). "Français, François Louis". Encyclopædia Britannica. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 774. Laurence Pauchet-Warlop, Jane Turner (editor) (2000), The Grove Dictionary of Art,