Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), his friendships with the artists Max Claudet (1840-1893) and Paul Dubois (1829-1905), and his public image in the 1870s and 1880s.

Biographers have largely ignored Louis Pasteur's many and varied connections with art and artists. This article is the third in a series of the authors' studies of Pasteur's friendships with artists. This research project has uncovered data that enlarge the great medical chemist's biography, throwing new light on a variety of topics including his work habits, his social life, his artistic sensibilities, his efforts to lobby on behalf of his artist friends, his relationships to their patrons and to his own patrons, and his use of works of art to foster his reputation as a leader in French medical science. In their first article, the authors examined his unique working relationship with the Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt and the creation of the famous portrait of Pasteur in his laboratory in the mid-1880s. A second study documented his especially warm friendship with three French artists who came from Pasteur's home region, the Jura, or from neighbouring Alsace. The present study explores Pasteur's friendships with Max Claudet and Paul Dubois, both of whom created important representations of Pasteur. These friendships and others with patrons reveal an active pursuit of patronage and reputation building from 1876 into the late 1880s. Yet, although Pasteur actively used public art to raise his status, it becomes clear in these stories that for Pasteur beauty was an ideal and art a pleasure for its own sake.