Alfred Emile Mery (French, 1824-1896)

Alfred Emile Mery was a student of J Beaucé. He fist exhibited at the Paris salon in 1848 winning a medal in 1868. He was financially ruined by the war of 1870 and resumed a career exhibiting everywhere from 1873 to 1877. Among scenes of interiors and still-lifes, his preferred subjects were birds, especially sparrows, as well as hornets bees cats and monkeys. He sometime gives a baroque quality to his animal subjects both through their strangeness and through the style he uses.