Jean-Louis Forain (1852–1931) was born Louis Henri Forain on 23 October 1852 in Reims, into a modest family of artisans. As a boy he moved with his family to Paris, where he often visited the Louvre and learned from the Old Masters. He began as a gifted draughtsman and watercolourist, and he became a close friend of Edgar Degas.
At Degas’s invitation Forain took part in four of the Impressionist exhibitions between 1879 and 1886. He painted and drew the life of Parisians in the theatre, the ballet, the café and the law courts, with a keen eye for social satire, and he worked in oil, watercolour, pastel, etching and lithography. He also earned his living as a caricaturist and illustrator for Parisian newspapers and magazines such as Le Figaro, Le Rire and L’Écho de Paris, and during the First World War he published patriotic drawings.
In 1923 Forain was elected to the Institut de France. He died in Paris on 11 July 1931, aged 78.