Born in Paris, the painter and draftsman Sébastien Charles Giraud was a pupil of his painter brother Eugène Giraud. He made his debut at the Salon of 1839 with a studio interior, and then made a trip to the North Pole. Between 1844 and 1859, he regularly exhibited at the Salon. Since the 1850s, he painted views of Tahiti, where he went in 1842 at the request of the British Consul. Later he painted with preference interiors, landscapes and genre scenes from Brittany.