Aristide Maillol (1861-1944)

Aristide Joseph Bonaventure Maillol, was a French sculptor, painter, and printmaker. Maillol was born in Banyuls-sur-Mer, Roussillon. He decided at an early age to become a painter, and moved to Paris in 1881 to study art. 

After several applications and several years of living in poverty, his enrollment in the École des Beaux-Arts was accepted (1885), and he studied there under Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alexandre Cabanel. 

His early paintings show the influence of his contemporaries Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Paul Gauguin. Gauguin encouraged his growing interest in decorative art, an interest that led Maillol to take up tapestry design. In 1893 Maillol opened a tapestry workshop in Banyuls, producing works whose high technical and aesthetic quality gained him recognition for renewing this art form in France.

Maillol began making small terracotta sculptures in 1895, and within a few years, his concentration on sculpture led to the abandonment of his work in tapestry.