Jean François Gigoux (1806-1894), painter, printmaker, and illustrator, was born on January 8, 1806, in Besançon, France and he first studied at l’Académie de Besançon.  In 1828 Gigoux went to Paris and enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he studied under Theodore Gericault and Camille Corot.

Gigoux was foremost a portrait and history painter and he holds a distinguished place among the painters of the Romantic School. He also worked in woodcut and etching but he was quite facile with the lithographic crayon and is noted for his romantic and passionate portraits in that medium.

In 1842 Gigoux became a chevalier in the Légion of honor and was named an officer of the Légion in 1880. He was the last love of countess Eveline Hańsak, the widow of French novelist Honoré de Balzac. Gigoux died December 31, 1894 at the age of eighty-eight.