Balthus (born 1908) was a French painter and stage designer who worked within the Western tradition of figure painting. He is best known for his paintings of everyday life invested with a sense of mystery, symbolism, and eroticism.

Balthus was born Balthasar Klossowski in Paris, France, on February 29, 1908, to a Prussian family that had left Silesia five years before. His parents were both painters, as was his brother, and they lived in Switzerland and Berlin during the turbulent years before, during, and after World War I. Balthus did not study at the Academy of Fine Arts or in the studio of another painter. Instead, he taught himself by copying masterpieces at the Louvre Museum, as had many painters in the 19th century. He did attend sketching classes at the Grand Chaumiere, an informal art school, where he received criticism from Maurice Vlaminck and Pierre Bonnard, two prominent painters associated...