Jean Francis Auburtin was a French painter. His art, influenced by that of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, is linked to the symbolism movement. Jean Francis Auburtin was the eldest son of a family of four children. His father, Alexandre Émile Auburtin (1838-1899), architect of the City of Paris , was originally from Lorraine. Jean Francis Auburtin enrolled at the École alsacienne in Paris in 1875. He went as far as rhetoric with André Gide and Pierre Lou s. Trained in his youth by the painter Louis-Théodore Devilly (1818-1886), he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, which he left without entering the Prix de Rome competition. He married Marthe Deloye, daughter of an artillery general and sister of one of his fellow students at the École Alsacienne. The couple left in 1893 for a long honeymoon through Italy, returning to the sources of Quattrocento art. In 1897, Auburtin studied the underwater fauna and flora at the aquariums of Roscoff and Banyuls, from where he brought back numerous sketches which enabled him to create in 1898 The Bottom of the Sea, a large set intended for the zoology amphitheater at the Sorbonne in Paris. He stayed in the Golden Islands and for a long time in Porquerolles, then in Brittany – Erquy , Bréhat, Ploumanac’h , Belle-Île – where he produced works preserved in the Pont-Aven museum . Then he discovered Corsica, the peaks of the Pyrenees, the numerous lakes of Landes and Talloires on the shores of Lake Annecy with his friends, the painter Albert Besnard (1849-1934) and his wife the sculptor Charlotte Besnard (1854-1931). At the request of the architect Marius Toudoire in 1901, Jean Francis Auburtin participated in the decoration of the Train Bleu restaurant at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, with the City of Nice intended to adorn the vestibule. Auburtin discovered Varengeville-sur-Mer in 1904. He bought land there in 1907 and asked his brother, the architect Jacques Marcel Auburtin (1872-1926), to build him a house. He became friends with Guillaume Mallet, creator of the Bois des Moutiers estate in the village of Varengeville, already portrayed by Claude Monet, whom he met between 1896 and 1897. In his studio on the Quai Carnot in Saint-Cloud, he received his friend Auguste Rodin with whom he shared some models. It was in this studio that his friend, the American dancer Loïe Fuller, gave a performance with her troupe in 1914. He also produced gouaches from 1909 to 1920 with the dance school of Isadora Duncan.He is buried in the marine cemetery of Varengeville-sur-Mer.