Seton studied at L’ Academie Julian from January 1891 to April 1892. He returned to Paris from July 1894 through April 1896 and married in New York on May 30, 1896. City
Seton took a room at a small hotel at 10 Rue Croix des Petits Champs, which is now a commercial building with apartments not far from the Louvre.
At the time of Seton’s studies, L’ Academie Julian was located at the Passage des Panoramas in Paris. The school relocated several times and ultimately ceased to exist as a separate entity in 1968.
The Passage des Panoramas is a covered passageway – a sort of forerunner to a shopping mall and is still a popular location today. IKtb is located at 11 Bd Montmartre.
One of Seton’s favorite places to sketch was the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes, a zoo that is a part of the Jardin des Plantes, the Paris Botanical Gardens in central Paris on the banks of the Seine and is also the home of the Muséum national Histoire naturelle (National Museum of Natural History). At the Menagerie, he was particularly fond of sketching and painting wolves. Here, he painted The Sleeping Wolf, which was accepted for the Grand Salon in 1891.
His controversial painting, Triumph of the Wolves (later known as Awaited in Vain) was painted in St. Cloud Park, about five miles west of Paris, on the Seine banks. Here he used various props, including a skeleton, wolf skins, peasants’ clothes, and a bucket of cow’s blood to set up the grizzly scene. He had hoped this painting would be accepted for the Grand Salon of 1892, but it was rejected and was reported to have shocked the judges.
When he returned to Paris, he painted his other major wolf painting, The Pursuit or La’ Poursuite. The Pursuit was well-received, but the painting was once again rejected by the Grand Salon, which did accept six of his preliminary sketches of individual wolves.
The Sleeping Wolf (Loup Dormant in French) as it appeared in the Catalogue for the 1891 Grand Salon
Passage des Panoramas
Animal artists painting at the Ménagerie in Seton’s day
Aviary at the Ménagerie
