While most artists staying in Rome at the time who were devoted to landscape painting confined themselves to excursions into the Roman Campagna and, at most, travelled as far as Umbria or the Gulf of Naples, with Capri and Ischia, André Giroux ventured even further south. At the beginning of the 19th century, Calabria was regarded as wild, with virtually no infrastructure, and, due to rampant malaria and the threat posed by bandits—the brigantaggio—as an extremely risky destination. The fact that Giroux travelled as far as Cassano allo Ionio testifies to an enormous urge to seek out new, unspoilt and topographically dramatic subjects beyond the established travel routes.

Giroux grew up at the heart of the Paris art scene. His father, François-Simon-Alphonse Giroux, was a restorer and art dealer. Giroux showed talent from an early age, making his debut at the Paris Salon at the age of 18, and from 1821 studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he was profoundly influenced by the classical landscape tradition. In 1825, he won the prestigious Prix de Rome in the category of historical landscape, the ‘Paysage historique’. The award came with a five-year scholarship at the French Academy in Rome, the Villa Medici. Although he had been awarded the prize for composed studio landscapes, in Italy he devoted himself almost entirely to painting from nature. Together with friends such as Camille Corot and Léon Fleury, he moved to the Roman Campagna—and then even further afield into the unexplored south.

Interestingly, Giroux later gave up painting and turned to the latest medium for creating images: he became a photographer.