Léon Emile Aldala Delachaux was a French painter who also worked in Switzerland and the United States was. Léon Delachaux was born the first child of French and Catholic Melanie Henry and Swiss and Protestant Louis-Auguste Delachaux. His parents, both watchmakers, had four more daughters, two of whom died in infancy. Between 1850 and 1855, Léon Delachaux spent his childhood in Switzerland in Murten in the canton of Fribourg . His father died in 1855 by suicide for material reasons. Between 1855 and 1859, Léon was placed in a reformatory in Pontarlier with two of his sisters. In 1859 his mother emigrated to Cairo , taking her children with her. In 1868 Léon Delachaux moved to Marseille . He spent some time painting bodies and then returned to Switzerland, where he found employment as a precious metal engraver. At the suggestion of a representative of the American jewelry company Tiffany & Co., Delachaux emigrated to the United States. He settled in Philadelphia in 1876, where he met Marie-Appoline Noël, who was from Étival-Clairefontaine in the Vosges Mountains of France. He married her on April 29, 1875. Their only son, Clarence, was born on December 14, 1875. Léon Delachaux became an engraver of watch cases. Clarence founded in 1902 in Colombes an Electrotechnical Firm. In 1876, Philadelphia celebrated the centenary of the United States Declaration of Independence and to mark the occasion opened the 1876 World’s Fair of the Century. This event was crucial for Léon Delachaux, who decided to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts . Between 1876 and 1881 he was a student of Thomas Eakins , a former student of Jean-Léon Gérôme. He also tried to take pictures. In 1882, Delachaux decided to return to France with his family. He financed the travel expenses from the contract with his art dealer Harrison Earle, to whom he promised to deliver his French works. In 1883 Delachaux received American citizenship. Once in France, he moved to Levallois-Perret and attended the studio of Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, a great friend of Thomas Eakins, with whom he studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme. In 1884 he moved to the international artists’ colony of Grez-sur-Loing near Fontainebleau. He showed his works at the Salon des Artistes Français. In 1887 he received an honorable mention in the salon “Crux Ave à Pàques” ( Kunsthaus Zürich ). In 1889 he participated in the 1889 Paris Universal Exhibition and won the bronze medal for the painting La Louée à Château-Landon. In 1891, Léon Delachaux left the Salon des Artistes Français for the Société national des beaux-arts. He became “Associé” in 1895, “Sociétaire” in 1901 and a member of the jury in 1903. He exhibited there every year until 1915. From 1900 to 1919 he lived in Saint-Amand-Montrond in the Cher. In 1907 he regained his French nationality while retaining his inalienable Swiss nationality. On November 4, 1911, Léon Delachaux received the rank of Knight of the Legion of Honour. He died in Saint-Amand-Montrond and rests in the Grez-sur-Loing cemetery.