Before moving to Paris and becoming a pupil of Roqueplan c.1829 he had already painted his earliest landscapes in his native region and the Auvergne.

In 1831-3 he visited the Middle East, at first accompaning the naturalist Baron Karl von Hügel. He brought back many studies and established a considerable reputation for himself as an Orientalist painter as well as a portraitist. In his last years he became insane and he died in an asylum.