Duteurtre was a trained artist that was influenced by his father, an architect and a mother a weaver/milliner. He developed artistic skills early and was already receiving recognition for drawing and color by the age 14. His parents’ social status and education would have introduced the young Duteurtre to the great French impressionists such as Renoir, Degas, Morisot and the American Impressionist, Mary Cassatt. Duteurtre's visual narratives are rooted in the first generation of impressionists, but he recast that art movement into a modern idiom, using independent methods of his own. He is known for reinventing those imaginative ideals of the first generation French impressionists. In his painting: “ At the Morning Vanity ” from the late 1960s, he creates a well-balanced composition of a mother and young daughter, where the daughter is preparing for the day as the mother looks on (Plate 1). To create the composition he uses vigorous brushwork of short staccato strokes that