Elie Faure

In 1904 he published a brochure about the painter Velazquez. The next year he co-founded the Universite Populaire, a school for adult education. It was while he was an instructor there that he came out with what is considered to be his greatest work, the epic "History of Art". When World War I broke out he joined the French army and served as a surgeon, returning to his art career at war's end. He published many brochures on the major French artists, such as Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse, and and became good friends with the renowned Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Rivera even painted a portrait of Faure in his old French army uniform.

At 17 years of age Elie was sent to the Lycee Henri IV in Paris, where he studied medicine, receiving his degree in 1899. He became a respected surgeon, but his first love was always art--although he was not a painter himself--and from childhood he had been entranced with paintings and painters (during his college days in Paris he would spend much of his off time in The Louvre). He married at 24 and his wife gave birth to two sons, one of whom died in infancy. He was so traumatized by this tragic incident that he went for many years without even looking at a painting. It was when he became involved in what became known as The Dreyfus Affair--when French Army Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, was convicted by the French army leadership of spying for Germany, a charge motivated entirely by anti-Semitism--that he regained his love of art, mainly due to his association with writer Émile Zola, a staunch defender of Dreyfus. It was through Zola that Faure met the painters he had most admired, and this was the start of his career as an art historian.

French art critic and historian Elie Faure was born in Ste. Foy, Gironde, France, in 1873. His father was a grower of wine grapes.