Emile Friant was born in 1863 Lorraine and fled to Nancy with his family after the Germans took their home in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871.  He was trained in landscapes and still life from an early age and in 1878 became a local celebrity through the success of one of his paintings. 

Friant was sent to Paris where he studied under Alexandre Cabanel but left and returned to Nancy when he became disillusioned with the Academic school.  He presented in works in the Salon of Paris from 1882 to 1886 and won second place in the Prix de Rome in 1883.  His work gradually became more popular and in 1923 he became a professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.  He died suddenly in Paris at the age of sixty-six.

La Lutte

In his La Lutte, or The Wrestle of 1889 Friant shows his fondness for depicting everyday French peasants in their routine pastimes.  This particular painting captures a scene of youths wrestling by a stream in the French countryside.  The painting is in the Musee Fabre in Montpellier, France.