Wilfrid left Brighton College in 1889, spent a very brief period at the Royal Academy Schools, South Kensington, and had enrolled at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris by 1891. It was probably the case that in common with many other British painters of his generation, he found himself disappointed at the quality of the artistic training on offer in London, and with such a cosmopolitan family background he is unlikely to have felt any great degree of obstacle to studying in another country.

De Glehn arrived at the Ecole while it was in a period of transition. The French history painter, Jules Elie Delaunay, was already ill, and when he died in September 1891, his friend, the charismatic symbolist painter Gustave Moreau, took on his teaching responsibilities. By January 1892 Moreau was named professor in charge of the studios there. Moreau had been a mentor to younger artists throughout his life but at the age of 65 he discovered a great talent for formal teaching. According to his student, the Fauve painter Georges Rouault, “At the Ecole he was the first to arrive and the last to leave… When he left the building, the novices caught the skirts of his jacket, crying ‘Monsieur Moreau, correct our work’. He was younger in spirit than most of us.” Another of Moreau’s famous students was Henri Matisse, who acknowledged him as his teacher throughout his career. He recalled with affection Moreau’s genuine and sudden enthusiasms for artists as diverse as Raphael, Veronese and Chardin, artists whose work the students were urged to go to study and copy in the Louvre. The fact that many of Moreau’s students were so successful, but were so diverse in their respective practices, and that none of them could be thought of as direct followers or copyists of the master’s style, is indicative of his approach as a teacher. As F. A. Trapp put it, “Moreau did not so much ‘train’ as cultivate”.

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