Louis pasteur: the man and the artist

Abstract

The Finnish artist A. Edelfelt. author of the famous portrait of Pasteur in his laboratory (1887). expressed the following Judgement about Pasteur as a painter. in the letter addressed to one of his friends: “besides science. painting is one of the few things that interested him. When he was sixteen he had attempted to become a painter and entertained himself making pastel portraits of citizens of Arbors; some of those portraits hang in his house or at the Institute; I have often observed them; they are extremely good and much better than the usual work of young people who devote themselves to artistic life. In those portraits there is something of the great Investigator: they express absolute truth and a not-so-common will power. I am sure that had Pasteur opted for art Instead of science France would count him now among its most gifted painters”.