Régis Gignoux was born in Lyons, France, and educated at that city's Académie de St. Pierre and in Fribourg, Switzerland. He won a scholarship to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied with Horace Vernet and Paul Delaroche. In 1840 Gignoux emigrated to America, settling in Brooklyn, New York. After his marriage that year, Gignoux set out on a year's sketching trip through the Allegheny and Catskill mountains, and upon his return to Brooklyn, he devoted himself to landscape painting.
Gignoux first exhibited his work at the National Academy of Design, New York, in 1842, and his paintings were distributed through the American Art-Union, New York, which helped to establish his reputation among collectors, including the Baron de Rothschild and the Earl of Elsemere. In 1844 he enrolled in classes at the National Academy and was made an associate member the same year. He also began showing his work at the Boston Athenaeum, and opened a studio in New York where his students included George Inness. In 1850 Gignoux took a sketching trip to the coast of Maine with fellow artists Frederic Edwin Church and Richard William Hubbard. On his return he was elected a full member of the National Academy.
Gignoux traveled widely during his career, making frequent local excursions to New Jersey and the Hudson Valley, as well as to the Adirondacks, the White Mountains, and Quebec. As a prominent resident of Brooklyn, Gignoux was involved in the organization of the first exhibition of the Brooklyn Athenaeum in 1856, and by 1861 was elected President of the new Brooklyn Art Association. Gignoux returned to France in 1869, where he resided in Paris until his death in 1882. For the rest of his career, he traveled and exhibited widely in France, and also visited Italy and Switzerland.
