Jules Joseph Lefebvre was an academic painter who began his career with history paintings, and later moved to specializing in portraits and female nudes, the latter often in the role of subjects from history or mythology.
His work was well received at the Paris Salon, and he became a respected teacher at the Académie Julian. Among his students were a number of notable American Impressionist painters, including Childe Hassam, Frank Weston Benson, Willard Metcalf, Guy Rose, Charles Edmund Tarbell and Charles Courtney Curran.
[Note: some of the images on the sites linked below should be considered NSFW.]