Ulisse Caputo (1872–1948) was born in Salerno, in southern Italy, in 1872, the son of a stage designer at the Teatro Verdi, who first taught him to draw. He studied in Naples under Domenico Morelli and worked with the painter Gaetano Esposito.
Around 1900 he settled in Paris, where he exhibited at the Exposition Universelle and, from 1901, at the Salon des artistes français. He became known for his elegant scenes of Belle Époque society: fashionable women in parks and theatre boxes, intimate genre subjects, portraits and views of Paris. He also painted Brittany, the south of France and the Amalfi Coast, as well as Orientalist scenes.
Caputo spent most of his later life in France and died in Paris in 1948.