A painter, printmaker and writer, Marcellin Gilbert Desboutin was born into a wealthy family, and for the first part of his life enjoyed a comfortable existence. Giving up a career in law in favour of becoming an artist, in 1845, he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he studied first with the sculptor Louis-Jules Etex and later with the painter Thomas Couture.

In 1854, after several years of traveling in England and the Low Countries, Desboutin and his family settled in Italy, where he bought the Villa dell’Ombrellino at Bellosguardo, overlooking Florence. He was to live there for the next seventeen years, enjoying a luxurious lifestyle and amassing a collection of paintings and furniture, as well as writing plays. The Villa de...