Among these friends are Jean-Léon Gérôme, Gustave Boulanger and Jean-Louis Hamon. In 1857, Picou began a successful career as a portraitist and genre painter, and delivered at each Salon works inspired by life under the Second Empire.
Each of his compositions demonstrates that for this man trained in classical philosophy and in love with the poetry of his time, painting is a means of expressing values ​​and an art of living combining intellectual exigency and exaltation of the senses. 
Works in the Musée d'Orsay. The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes also has an important Picou collection and in 2014 it dedicated an exhibition (La Lyre d'Ivoire) in association with the Ingres Museum in Montauban.
Ladies holding a bouquet or fishing were subjects produced by this Master.