Born in Lyons, France to a family of artists, Raoul Maucherat de Longpre had a prominent career as a painter of floral still-lifes. The calling ran in de Longpre’s family; his father, Jean-Antoine, decorated fans with floral paintings and his brother Paul became a noted floral painter in California. Raoul began painting at a young age, producing highly-detailed studies of various flowers. He earned a job decorating fans at the age of twelve and was exhibiting at the Paris Salon by the age of twenty-one.