1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Constant, Benjamin

CONSTANT, BENJAMIN (1845–1902), French painter, was born in Paris, and studied under Cabanel. His first Salon picture, “Hamlet et le Roi,” was hung in 1869, and he became at once one of the recognized modern masters in France. In addition to a number of subject-pictures, such as “Trop Tard” (1870), “Samson et Delilah” (1871), and others taken from Moroccan studies, he was an eminent painter of portraits of some of the most prominent men and women of the day, one of his last being that of Queen Victoria (1900). He was a member of the Institut de France and received several French and foreign decorations.