Born in Paris into a working class family from Moulins in the Bourbonnais, where he spent his vacations as a child, the young Armand Guillaumin began working in Paris in his uncle's store while studying drawing in the evening. In 1860 he joined the Swiss Academy where he met Cézanne and Pissarro, with whom he would work closely throughout his life. Unable to make a living from his painting, he obtained a night job at the "Ponts et Chaussées" department in order to be able to paint during the day.

From the 1870's, he worked with Pissarro in Pontoise, a French village affected by industrialization. Guillaumin shared Pissarro's love of landscape painting and adopted his carefully ordered pictorial composition and style. Cézanne, still a student of Pissarro, joined them. From his work with Pissarro and Cézanne, Guillaumin developed an art of the landscape where perspectives open up by turning paths and in which sometimes intervenes a vision of industry tinged with a certain romanticism.

The artist participated in the first exhibition of the Impressionist group in 1874 and exhibited at most of the following editions, as well as at the Salon des Refusés. In the late 1880s, Guillaumin became friends with Vincent Van Gogh, whose brother, Theo, sold some of his paintings. At the same time, he became known in the United States through an exhibition of Impressionist painters organized by the famous art dealer Durand-Ruel.

At the end of the century, an important lottery win allowed him to devote himself full time to his passion. He regularly stayed in Crozant, a small village in the Creuse, where he liked to paint the riverbanks. His painting became more subjective, he began to use very expressive colors, soon anticipating the Fauves. He went to the Côte d'Azur several times, notably to Agay. Guillaumin died in 1927, at the age of 86. He was the last survivor of the Impressionist group, of which he was one of the most faithful and loyal members.