The only son and pupil of the landscape painter Adolphe Appian, Louis Appian was active as a genre, still life and landscape painter, as well as a portraitist and etcher. He entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lyon in 1879, before winning a scholarship in 1885 to study in Paris, where he completed his training with Alexandre Cabanel.

Although he failed to win the Prix de Rome in 1887, Appian enjoyed a measure of success as a painter, although not on a par with the reputation enjoyed by his father, alongside whom he sometimes painted landscapes and seascapes.

He first exhibited his work at the Salon in his native Lyon in 1886, showing portraits, nudes and still life subjects, and began showing at the Paris Salon two years lat...