French artist
Louis Joseph César Ducornet – the painter without arms
The Frenchman Louis Joseph César Ducornet was born without arms and with shortened legs
© Imago Images
The Frenchman Louis Joseph César Ducornet was born in 1806 with a severe handicap: he had neither arms nor thighs. But that didn’t stop him from pursuing a career as an artist.
When Louis Joseph César Ducornet was born on January 10, 1806, hardly anyone would have predicted that he would have a career as an artist. The Frenchman, who was born in Lille, was born without arms and with shortened legs. He was missing his thigh bones and his feet had only four toes – an incomplete limb development known in medicine as “ectromelia.” So his father carried him on his back.
When he was a child, he picked up pieces of coal from the ground with his toes. His rough sketches were so promising that he received art lessons. And he developed his own method: To hold the pallet, he stuck the big toe of his left foot into the hole in the pallet and rested it on his heel. He held the brush with his right foot between his big and second toe. Every now and then he held the brush between his teeth.
Louis Joseph César Ducornet also worked for the French government
The local press quickly became aware of the talented child and was full of praise for the boy Artist: “Ducornet César is a twelve-year-old child who was born without arms and whose talent for drawing arouses the admiration of the residents of Lille. In eight months of diligent work he has learned to use his feet in place of his missing hands,” it said there.
Sponsors also became aware of him and financed his entry into the École royale des beaux-arts, now the Paris State University of Fine Arts, in 1823. There he was taught, among others, by the painter Guillaume Lethière, in whose studio he joined. From then on he also received numerous orders from the government. Contemporary critics particularly praised his colors, his careful compositions, which were worked like true stage sets, and his poetry. It was often said: “What Ducornet does with his feet, others cannot do with their hands.”
From 1845 he lived in a house-studio on Rue Visconti in Paris until he died there on April 27, 1856 at the age of 50. On the occasion of his 218th birthday, Google is dedicating a doodle to him.
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Sources: lanouvelleathenes.fr, cnap.fr, www.virnot-de-lamissart.com