 Afterwards, he went to Paris to seek his fortune and came under the influence of his fellow Breton painter Pierre-Julien Gilbert.After four years of struggling to earn his living, he returned to Brittany to teach drawing in Saint-Pol-de-Léon, Lorient and Nantes.He had begun to participate in the Salon in 1840 and, in 1845, was one of several artists commissioned to provide engraved illustrations for a book on prisons by Maurice Alhoy entitled "Les Bagnes