Séraphine Louis

Séraphine Louis, known as Séraphine de Senlis (Séraphine of Senlis; 3 September 1864 – 11 December 1942), was a French painter and artist. Self-taught, she was inspired by her religious faith and by stained-glass church windows and other religious art.

Louis was born in Arsy (Oise) on 3 September 1864. Her father was a manual laborer and her mother came from a farmworking background. Louis's mother died on her first birthday and her father, who remarried, also died before she was seven; at which point, she came under the charge of her eldest sister. She first worked as a shepherdess but, by 1881, she was engaged as a domestic worker at the convent of the Sisters of Providence in Clermont, Oise. Beginning in 1901, she was employed as a housekeeper for middle-class families in the town of Senlis.

In addition to her arduous day jobs, Louis painted by candlelight, largely in secret isolation, until her considerable body of work was discovered in 1912 by German art collector Wilhelm Uhde. While in Senlis, Uhde saw a still-life of apples at his neighbor's house and was astonished to learn that Louis, his housecleaner, was the artist.