French-born Bussy trained at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where he became close friends with Henri Matisse. He travelled to London in 1901, where he exhibited works and met Dorothy Stachey, Duncan Grant’s cousin. In 1903 the pair married and moved to Le Souco, where they regularly accommodated Grant and members of the Bloomsbury group.
Best known for delicate paintings and drawings of animals, Bussy uses bold colour and minimal line to capture the characters of his subjects, based mostly on sketches from his trips to London zoo.