In 1878 Achille Laugé began part-time art studies in Toulouse while he was apprenticed to a pharmacist. There he befriended Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929). Three years later he enrolled in the Paris Ecole des Beaux-Arts under the famous masters Alexandre Cabanel and Jean-Paul Laurens. In 1888 Laugé returned to his family, then residing in Cailhau, and remained in the south of France for the rest of his life. He rejected the conservative ideals of his teachers and began to produce landscapes that were assiduous experiments in the division of colour. Laugé never conformed to Seurat's strict scientific method, but it is not likely that he evolved his technique independently as many of his biographers claim. He had been living in Paris when Seurat's masterpiece La Grande Jatte was first exhibited amidst such controversy in 1886, and he maintained close contact with the Parisian art world through friendships with fellow artists, frequent visits and exhibition activities.

From 1888 until around 1896, Laugé composed his pictures with small dots of colour. He then abandoned dots and painted landscapes, portraits and still lifes with thin, systematically placed strokes resembling crosshatching. After 1905 he applied his pigments more freely with enlarged strokes and a thick impasto. It was not until the 1968 Guggenheim shows that Laugé was included in an exhibition devoted to Neo-Impressionism. He did however exhibit three paintings with the Indépendants in 1894 and with the Nabis at an exhibition sponsored by the newspaper La Dépêche de Toulouse the same year. In addition, Laugé held several one man shows in Paris, in Toulouse and in Perpignan from 1907 to 1930.

Retrospectives of his work were organised all over the world from 1958 and 1969 (1958 in the local museum of Limoux, 1961 in Toulouse, 1966 in London, 1967 in New York, 1968 in London again and 1969 in Paris).