Fanny Claus was born on 25 July 1846 in
Besançon, France. She studied violin at the
Conservatoire de Paris, where she graduated in 1863. In 1866, she founded the first all-women string quartet musical group, known as Sainte-Cécile quartet. Through her friend
Suzanne Manet, pianist, wife of
Édouard Manet, a French
modernist painter, she met
Pierre -Ernest Prins, a French
painter,
engraver and
sculptor, whom she married in 1869. She is represented by Manet in
The Balcony, a
canvas exhibited in 1869. She was the mother of Pierre Prins (1870 – 1945), a French
explorer and
colonial administrator. She died on 18 April 1877 in Paris at the age of 31. ==References==