Until 1980 the only known facts about Ponthus-Cinier were to be found in Audin and Vial's Dictionnaire des artistes et ouvriers d'art du lyonnais (1918-19). Two exhibitions of the work of nineteenth-century Lyonese landscape painters in the early 1980s prompted more thorough research into the life of this artist. Although he was born in Lyons, Ponthus-Cinier seems to have studied at the École des