Jean Micas is known as a post-impressionist and was born at such an interesting time for French art. The post-impressionists, such as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat, sought to elicit an emotional response to their works by using form, composition and colour in a way that didn’t necessarily represent a subject accurately. For example, colour was often used to communicate a feeling rather than replicate exactly what the eye saw.

Micas was born in Garlin, a commune in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France, and studied under George Desvalieres and Dunoyer de Segonac. He exhibited regularly in France, Belgium, Germany and the United States and won a gold medal in Paris at the Salon des Artistes Francais.