Émile Aubry was born on 18 April 1880 in Sétif, Algeria, the son of a military doctor. This dual belonging — Algerian by birth, French by culture — would shape his entire life and deeply nourish his work.
He completed his classical education at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly in Paris, where he developed a solid grounding in Greco-Latin culture, before entering the École des Beaux-Arts in 1901, joining the studios of Jean-Léon Gérôme and Gabriel Ferrier. He quickly established himself as one of the most promising students of his generation, winning the Grand Prix de Rome in 1906 with a painting devoted to Virgil, and later benefiting in Rome from the advice of Carolus-Duran on the art of society portraiture.
His repertoire was built at the crossroads of several worlds. Subjects drawn from ancient mythology sit alongside biblical inspirations — Jesus by the Lake, At the Foot of the Cross — and orientalist scenes fed by his frequent returns to Algeria. With exacting rigour, he worked at length from the model, redrawing his sketches until reaching a perfection he always deemed incomplete. His Bacchanale, painted around 1929, entered the collections of the Musée d'Orsay, a mark of the national recognition accorded to his work.
He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français between 1905 and 1937, receiving a gold medal in 1920, the Prix Jean-Jacques-Henner in 1926, and a medal of honour in 1934. In 1935, he was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. His masterpiece remains the vast mural decoration of the Algiers Opera House, to which he devoted several years of intense work. He also produced several canvases for the Algeria pavilion at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris.
After the war, he settled almost entirely in Algeria, dividing his time between Aïn-Meddah and Algiers, painting portraits and landscapes of Kabylia and the Sahel. He donated fifty of his works to the city of Béjaïa, which dedicated a museum in his name. Émile Aubry died on 9 January 1964 in Voutenay-sur-Cure, leaving behind the image of a demanding and discreet painter, faithful throughout his life to two inseparable passions: the beauty of Antiquity and the light of his native land.