Awarded a second prize of the Prix de Rome in 1837. At just thirty-two years, he was hugely successful at the Exhibition of 1847 with "The Romans of the Decadence" (exhibited today in the nave of the Musée d'Orsay). This success opened doors to everyone who was anyone in Paris, including the high aristocratic and bourgeois milieu, as well as the political and intellectual world, and he became a sought-after portrait painter in the 1840s.

In 1847, he also opened a school-workshop, where he taught Manet, Puvis de Chavannes and Fantin-Latour, in particular.

He was commissioned works from the Government and the Church: in 1848, L'Enrôlement des volontaires en 1792, which he never finished (today at the Departmental Museum of Beauvais) and the decoration of the Virgin's chapel at Saint-Eustache Church (1851-1854). In 1856, he was commissioned for the Baptism of the Prince Imperial, and for the decoration of the Salles des États of the Louvre (neither of which panned out).

His relationship with the authorities deteriorated. Disappointed, he left the Parisian world behind in 1859 and moved to Senlis.