1872-1948 - Born in Paris on July 21, 1872, Marais-Milton specialized in genre paintings often featuring Cardinals and Clerical figures in humorous setting. Trained in the Academic ways, his works display his talent for both drawing and color. His finely modeled figures are captured in richly detailed interiors with rich colors. It appears that Marais-Milton began exhibiting at the Paris Salon in 1898, however his name regularly appears in the exhibitions catalogs after 1908.

His choice of subject matter was very popular during the period and many important artists dedicated their careers to similar themes, among them were Vibert, Landini, Croegaert and Brunery. Philip Hook and Mark Poltimore, in their book Popular 19th Century Painting, describe the reason for this:

The domestic antics of members of the higher echelons of the Roman Catholic Church exercised a powerful fascination for a number of popular painters and their patrons in the second half of the nineteenth century. These intimate scenes, set behind closed doors of the private quarters of a cardinal’s palace, constitute a clearly- defined genre of painting in their own right. … The immediate reasons for the appeal of such pictures are not far to seek. …. Buyer’s are seduced by the high technique lavished upon them, and relish colour compositions which revel so unashamedly in large expanses of Episcopal purple and crimson. On top of that the treatment is comic and full of character. But to understand the original motivation behind this choice of subject, one must not overlook the element, present in varying degrees in most such works, of anti-clericalism. There is no doubt that contemporary collectors and spectators took great pleasure in the sight on noble figureheads of the church reduced to banal, even undignified proportions. The comedy was appealing, and the anti-clerical message suited the prevailing political mood of the buying public.