Starting in 1853, Bayard was a student of Cogniet for five years, publishing his first cartoons at the age of fifteen, often using the anagrammatic pseudonym, Abel De Miray.[2]
While there had been art depicting spaceflight and alien worlds prior to 1865, they were based heavily on mysticism as opposed to science. Bayard's artwork accompanying From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne is considered among the first Space art of a scientific nature.[3]