Louise Abbéma (1853–1927) was born on 30 October 1853 in Étampes, near Paris, into a wealthy Parisian family with close ties to the city’s artistic circles. She began painting in her early teens and studied under Charles Chaplin, Jean-Jacques Henner and Carolus-Duran. She worked as a painter, sculptor, designer and engraver.
Abbéma first won recognition in her twenties with a portrait of the actress Sarah Bernhardt, who remained her close companion and frequent subject. She became a fashionable portraitist of the Belle Époque and a successful decorative painter, and was named an official painter of the Third Republic. Her panels and murals decorated the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, several district town halls, the Paris Opera, the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt and the Governor’s Palace in Dakar. In 1906 she was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur, one of the first women painters to receive it.
Abbéma never married. She died in Paris in July 1927.