Although little-known today, de Longpré played a key role in the popularization of Hollywood during the early 1900s. French-born and self-taught, he built an international reputation for lush, meticulously detailed floral still-life paintings. After immigrating to New York City in 1890, he relocated to Los Angeles, where two of his patrons, Daeida and Harvey Wilcox, offered him several plots of land within their new subdivision, called Hollywood. Wealthy from sales of his art, de Longpré built a lavish estate there, complete with several gardens and an art gallery that sold printed reproductions of his paintings. The estate became a prominent tourist attraction, and de Longpré’s popularity helped attract real estate development to the area. With the arrival of modernism in the mid-1910s, de Longpré’s sentimental imagery fell out of favor, and his contributions to the history of Los Angeles are today generally overlooked.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)