Louis Joseph César Ducornet

Ducornet c. 1840

Louis Joseph César Ducornet (January 10, 1806 in Lille – April 27, 1856 in Paris) was a French painter.

Ducornet was born without arms; he painted using his foot. He studied under François Louis Joseph Watteau and Guillaume Guillon-Lethière. He painted biblical and historical scenes, as well as portraits.

Biography

Ducornet was born of poor parentage at Lille, in 1806. He was deformed from his birth, having neither arms nor thighs, and only four toes to his right foot. While still a child, he used to pick up pieces of charcoal from the floor with his toes, and the rough sketches he thus made evinced so much promise that he received local instruction in art.

With the help of the municipality of Lille, he was sent to Paris, where he studied under Guillaume Guillon-Lethière and François Gérard, and for a short period of time he received a government pension. He died in Paris in 1856. Among his notable paintings are:

• Repentance. 1828.
• The Parting of Hector and Andromaque. (Lille Museum.)
• St. Louis administering Justice. (Lille Museum.)
• Death of Mary Magdalen. 1840. (St. André, Lille.)
• The Repose in Egypt. 1841.
• Christ in the Sepulchre. 1843.
• Edith finding the body of Harold. 1855.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bryan, Michael (1886). "Ducornet, Louis César Joseph". In Graves, Robert Edmund. Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (A–K). I (3rd ed.). London: George Bell & Sons.