The training Lesson

Geoffroy was recognized for his charming compositions of children. As one critic wrote,"...of pictures of everyday life, without the slightest effort at idealization, M. Geoffroy deserves notice for (his) uncompromising realism" (S. B., The Art Journal, The Paris Salon of 1886, London, 1886, p. 224). He was decorated as a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur and a member of the Sociétaire des Artistes Français at the age of thirty. He began exhibiting at the Salon when he was twenty-one, and he won a third-class medal in 1886 and a gold medal in 1900 at the Exposition Universelle, the same year that Un Bois secret by Bridgman (see lot 72) was shown.