French, 1815-1879

Born in Senlis in 1815, Thomas Couture was encouraged by his shoemaker father, Jean, to become a scholar or academician. Proving to be a disappointment to the family because his seeming lack of intellectual promise, Jean focused on teaching an older son the classics. Thomas grew up with a basic insecurity about his education, and he consistently wavered between a desire to show up authority with his independence, and a need to impress with his erudition. About 1828 Couture matriculated in the École gratuite de dessin at the Conservatoire des arts et métiers on Rue Saint-Martin in Paris. He was inculcated with the ideal of combining art and technology, and later he executed designs for the applied a...