His family originally came from Normandy. He was born in Saint-Cloud. His passion for art began at a very early age and he finally persuaded his parents to give him drawing lessons, which he took for ten years from a local instructor at the rate of three Francs per month.^[1] His lessons had to be cancelled at the start of the Franco-Prussian War, when his family returned to Normandy to ensure their safety.^[2] This would be all the formal art training he ever received.

Nevertheless, in 1875 he was able to make his début at the Salon with a bas-relief portrait medallion of François Jules Edmond Got, an actor at the Comédie-Française, and several etchings. Between 1877 and 1879, he made the acquaintance of Edgar Degas and Édouard Manet, who he met with frequently at the Café de la Nouvelle Athènes. It was there that he was introduced to Émile Zola, some of whose works he would later illustrate.^[2] Source: Wikipedia.