Hippolyte Lavoignat was a native of Laon and a highly skilled wood engraver who had trained in England. He was much employed by Paris publishers of the 1830s and 1840s in the illustration of books after designs by prominent artists of the period, including Honoré Daumier. He played an important role in the technical development of wood engraving toward complex painterly and tonal effects. About 1848, he turned to work in oil, like Daumier, and became a landscape painter whose work was occasionally shown at the Salons of the 1850s and 1860s. Lavoignat owned at least four paintings by Daumier and in 1878 was among the friends who lent pictures to Daumier's first one-man exhibition. (Eitner 2000, 185, 188 note 4)