Biography

Jules Marie Auguste Leroux studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, then at the Beaux-Arts under Léon Bonnat. He won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1894 and studied for two years at the Villa Medici in Rome. When he returned from Italy he exhibited almost every year in Paris at the Salon des Artistes Français, of which he became a member in 1904. He won a second-class medal in 1898 and a bronze in 1900 at the Exposition Universelle. He was a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1906 to 1939.

He illustrated many books, including Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet (1911); Casanova de Seingalt’s Mémoires (1925); Alphonse Daudet’s Sappho (1925); Flaubert’s A Simple Heart (1913); Corinthian Weddings (1902); Goethe’s Werther; J. K. Huysman’s Á Rebours (1920); Leconte de Lisle’s Erinnyes (1912); Pierre Loti’s Aziyadé (1937); Guy de Maupassant’s A Life ( Une vie); Stendhal’s The Abbess of Castro ( L’Abesse de Castro); Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days ( Le tour du monde en 80 jours); Anatole France’s La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque; and Flaubert’s Bouvart et Pécuchet. He was a sought-after portrait artist (his sitters included Anatole France and Louis Barthou) and also painted historical and religious subjects (mosaics for the Sacré-Coeur) and genre scenes. He drew his inspiration from the life of Paris during the Belle Époque, nudes, and dancers, and between 1906 and 1913 he painted many bright views of Brittany, which he visited every year.

The year after his death in 1955 a large retrospective of his work was held at the Grand Palais in Paris.

Museum and Gallery Holdings

Bayeux: Samson and Delilah

Coutances

Dijon: Study for a Nude

Jarnac (Paul Ricard Foundation)

Le Faouët

Le Puy-en-Velay (Mus. Crozatier)

Paris (Basilique du Sacré-Cœur): mosaics

Paris (Maison de Victor Hugo)

Paris (MAM): Sleeping Child

Paris (Mus. Carnavalet)

Paris (Mus. National du Moyen Age)

Poitiers

Rome (Accademia di Francia, Villa Medici)

St-Omer (Mus. de L’Hôtel Sandelin): Commandant Baron Joseph du Teil; Colonel Baron Joseph du Teil

St-Quentin