Jean-Gabriel Domerque (1889 – 1962) was born in Bordeaux. He was a French painter specializing in portraits of Parisian women. His subjects included flowers, nudes, landscapes, and portraits. He was working in gouache, pastel, ink and watercolor. Domerque studied at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. Beginning 1920s he concentrated on portraits, and he is claimed to be the inventor of the pin-up. In 1906, at the young age of 17, he exhibited at the French Artists Exhibition (the Salon Des Artistes Francais). In 1911, he won the second prize of the Prix de Rome and in 1920 won the gold medal award. In the same year, he also designed clothes for the couturier Paul Poiret. Domerque worked as the curator of the Musée Jacquemart-André from 1955 until 1962, where he was organizing exhibitions of the works of Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Goya and others.
He was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur. At the beginning of his career, Domerque was recognized for landscape painting, but later, he concentrated being the painter of the "Parisian lady" and with many of them being nudes. Indeed, as an artist he had invented a new type of woman: elegant, airy, thin, with a neck that looks like that of a swan and with wide seductive eyes which stare upon the world with craving. He received awards such as the Fellow of the Academy of Fine Arts Award and the Knight of the Legion of Honour. The solo exhibitions he participated in include Villa Domerque, Cannes, France, and Collection Jane et Howard Thomas. Domerque died in 1962 on a Paris sidewalk.
