French novelist and journalist, theoretician of the Realist movement, which he analyzed in Le Réalisme (1857). Although his reputation has declined, he was an influential figure whose writings helped to popularize the work of the painter Gustave Courbet, then controversial for his frank portrayal of scenes from common life.

After an interrupted education, Champfleury went to Paris and lived a bohemian existence in a literary group that included the poet Charles Baudelaire. One of his best-known works, in which he tried to realize his theory that novels should be “daguerreotypes” of everyday life, is Chien-Caillou (1847), the story of an unhappy love affair. His massive output also included a history of caricature. A discriminating collector of pottery and popular engravings, he was appointed curator in 1872 of the porcelain collections in the Sèvres Museum.