Blossom by the River

Son of an affluent family, Raymond Thibesart was born in Troyes (France), on May 2, 1874. Soon after his parents moved their residence to the city of Enghien, in close proximity to Paris. It was there where the Thibesarts met an agreeable and large Venezuelan family who just arrived in France, the Boggios. Very gifted in drawing, Thibesart admired Emile Boggio, 17 years his senior, who gave him his first lessons when he was 11 years old. Emile Boggio, the great Venezuelan Impressionist master, became Thibesart’s first art teacher. Thibesart began his official studies at the Lycée Rollin in Paris and entered the l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1894 and later to the Acadèmie Julian. His teachers Jules Lefevre and Tony Robert Fleury, introduced him to the movement of "SYMBOLISM", which influenced the early part of the artist’s career.