Albert Edelfelt: Louis Pasteur, 1885 (detail)

Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905) was a Finnish painter noted for his naturalistic style and realist approach to art. He lived in the Grand Duchy of Finland and made Finnish culture visible abroad. He is considered one of the most notable artists of the Golden Age of Finnish Art. He began his formal studies of art in 1869 at the Drawing School of the Finnish Art Society and continued as a student of Adolf von Becker. He studied history painting at the Antwerp Academy of Art, and also spent time in Paris where he learned the practice of en plein air painting. Edelfelt was one of the first Finnish artists to achieve international fame.

Pasteur's portrait by Edelfelt is the best-known portrait of the French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895). The painting shows Pasteur in his laboratory at the rue d'Ulm, surrounded by his experimental apparatus, the innovative laboratory glassware used in the experimental methods developed by him on the field of bacteriology in the late 19th century.

Pasteur is renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization. He invented a vaccine against rabies, and is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and prevention of diseases, and his discoveries have saved countless lives ever since. Innovative laboratory glassware and experimental methods were developed by Louis Pasteur among others, and contributed to the developing field of bacteriology in the late 19th century. He is regarded as one of the main founders of bacteriology, and he is popularly known as the father of microbiology.

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HC-1136: card size 6" x 6" (150mm x 150mm)