Charles Gleyre. Marc Gabriel Charles Gleyre, was a Swiss artist who was a resident in France from an early age.
He took over the studio of Paul Delaroche in 1843 and taught a number of younger artists who became prominent, including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Auguste Toulmouche, Louis-Frederic Schützenberger, and Henry-Lionel Brioux. Gleyre was born in Chevilly, near Lausanne.
His parents died when he was eight or nine years old, and he was brought up by an uncle in Lyon, France, who sent him to the city's industrial school. He began his formal artistic education in Lyon under Bonnefond, before moving to Paris, where he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts under Hersent.
He also attended the Academie Suisse and studied watercolour technique in the studio of Richard Parkes Bonington. He then went to Italy, where he became acquainted with Horace Vernet and Louis Léopold Robert.
It was through Vernet's recommendation that he was chosen by the American traveller John Lowell Jr. to accompany him on his journeys round the eastern Mediterranean, recording the scenes and ethnographic subjects they met with. They left Italy in spring 1834 and visited Greece, Turkey and Egypt, where they remained together until November 1835, when Lowell left for India. Gleyre continued his travels around Egypt and Syria, not returning to France until 1838. He retu