Jules Joseph Lefebvre

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Jules Joseph Lefebvre (Tournan-en-Brie, March 14, 1836 – Paris, February 24, 1911) was a French figure painter.

Lefebvre entered the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 1852 and was a pupil of Léon Cogniet. He won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1861. Between 1855 and 1898, he exhibited 72 portraits in the Paris Salon. In 1891, he became a member of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts.

He was an instructor at the Académie Julian in Paris. He is chiefly important as an excellent and sympathetic teacher who numbered many Americans among his 1500 or more pupils. One of his famous students was the Scottish born landscape painter William Hart. Georges Rochegrosse, Félix Vallotton, the Americans Childe Hassam, Edmund C. Tarbell, John Henry Twachtman, John Noble Barlow, Augustus Kenderdine, Irene E. Parmelee, Charles A. Platt were also his pupils. He was long a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts.

Many of his paintings are single figures of beautiful women.

Among his best portraits were those of M. L. Reynaud and the Prince Imperial (1874). Among his many decorations were a first-class medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1878 and the medal of honor in 1886. He was a Commander of the Legion of Honor and a member of the Institut de France.

[edit] Significant milestones

1853 Student at the École des Beaux-Arts
1859 Second place Prix de Rome
1861 His Death of Primam wins the Prix de Rome
1870 Académie Julian professor
1870 Légion d'Honneur, Officer, named Commander from 1898
1891 Member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts

[edit] Selected works

La Vérité (1870), oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. The painting is contemporary with the first small scale model made by Lefebvre's fellow-Frenchman Frédéric Bartholdi for what became the Statue of Liberty - striking a similar pose, though fully clothed.