b Chazelles-sur-Lyon, 1855; d Paris, 7 May 1917.

French painter and illustrator. On 9 November 1872 he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lyon where he worked with the engraver J.-B. Danguin (1823–94) and on 19 March 1877 he was enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and joined Henri Lehmann’s studio, where he befriended Seurat. In 1879 he sent some drawings to the Salon and in the following year two paintings, Hunting and Fishing (untraced). Shortly afterwards he became the pupil of Puvis de Chavannes, working closely with him for the next ten years. Séon assisted Puvis principally with his murals for the Panthéon in Paris and the great staircase of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon. In 1884 he won first prize in the competition organized by the municipality of Courbevoie for the decoration of the banqueting halls of the town hall, choosing the theme of The Seasons (executed in 1889). During this period he was appointed drawing-master for the schools of the city of Paris. He believed that ‘art should be instructive’ and interested himself deeply in social problems. In 1891 he painted a portrait of Joséphin Peladan (Lyon, Mus. B.-A.) and the following year with Peladan and the Comte de la Rochefoucauld he founded the Salon de la Rose + Croix in order to ‘fight against naturalism in painting and to provide a platform for young artists’.