Lobrichon was a French painter, illustrator, and cartoonist, famous for his representations of childhood.
Like William-Adolph Bouguereau, Henri-Léopold Levy, and Isidore Pils, Timoléon Marie Lobrichon was a student of François-Edouard Picot at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Lobrichon’s particular specialty was painting babies and children, either alone or with their parents in genre settings. A typical example of the latter, for example, is the painting entitled Helping with the Washing, which appeared on the London art market in 1978.
From 1859, Lobrichon exhibited regularly at the Salon, winning a medal in 1868. He showed mainly genre scenes, such as a painting of a young girl with a soldier doll, entitled Premiere Amour, included in the Salon of 1872. He won the first place medal at the Salon of 1868, and also contributed to exhibitions in Germany and Australia. Lobrichon's talent for depicting children with great charm and appeal led to several of his works being used as advertisements in magazines of the period. Similarly, in 1884, Lobrichon was commissioned to provide illustrations for Jean Aicard's book La Chanson de l'Enfant; an original painting for one of these illustrations was sold at auction in 1986.
Though he was justly celebrated as a painter of children, his work was not entirely limited to such subjects. A large horizontal canvas of The Birth of Spring (1864), for example, was almost certainly intended for a decorative scheme in a Parisian hôtel particulier, as was an oval painting of An Allegory of the Dawn, dated 1875. Paintings by Lobrichon are in the collections of the museums of Besançon, Chalons-sur-Marne, Limoges and Mulhouse, as well as in the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Private collection, London