Charles S. Pearce was a leading American expatriate working and living in Paris along with J.S. Sargent and other important artist of that time. Pearce was born and educated in Boston and began his artistic career in 1872. He began to send in his work to the Paris Salon in 1876, mainly portraiture, religious subjects and Oriental genre scenes. In that same year Pearce exhibited in the 1876 Centennial in Philadelphia. His work was allied in subject matter and style with that of the French academic peasants he studied with; Jules Bastien-le Page and Jules Breton. His work tended to be sentimental, focused on Northern French rural life. Pearce's subjects were solidly modeled, accurate in detail and sensuous with texture. In 1885, Pearce had settled 20 miles outside Paris in a town called Auvers-Sur-Oise and worked in a glass-enclosed studio year round. He contributed a series of six lunette murals to the Library of Congress near the turn of the century.

Biography courtesy of The Caldwell Gallery, www.antiquesandfineart.com/caldwell