Lot 12: Francois-Auguste Biard (1799-1882)

Polar Bear Hunt oil on canvas 12 7/8 x 16 1/8in. (32.8 x 41cm.) Born and trained in Lyon, Biard travelled throughout his career, to Egypt and Syria on the corvette La BayadŠre in 1827-28, to the Arctic regions, visiting Greenland, Lapland, Spitszbergen and the Arctic along the Siberian coast in the late 1830s and early 1840s. As court painter, he used his Arctic landscapes as backdrops to illustrate the Arctic travels of the King, when the Duc d'Orleans, in Lapland in 1795.