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Oil on canvas
Signed, lower left: "Georges Leroux

Leroux, who studied with Léon Bonnat in Paris, was a distinguished painter of landscapes, figures, and scenes from history. He was also a gifted illustrator who illustrated books by Anatole France and others. He was a member of the Salon des Artistes Français and from 1901 regularly took part in their exhibitions. He won a number of awards and prizes, including medals in 1903 and 1911. In 1906 Leroux was awarded the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome and spent the next few years working at the Villa Médicis, the Academy of France in Rome. On his return to France he exhibited at the Galerie Devambez in 1913 seventy landscapes done in the countryside around Florence and Rome. The horrors of the First World War served as a grim inspiration to his work and after 1918 he produced a number of very somber paintings dealing with the inhumanity of war. A good example is the frieze Le Dernier Communiqué (The Last Communiqué) which is now in the collection of the Petit Palais in Paris. Another, now in the Musée National du Château de Versailles, is a powerful depiction of soldiers burying their fallen comrades by the light of the moon. Leroux also served as a soldier in the war and his bravery was rewarded with two citations and the Croix de Guerre. 

Leroux was commissioned to do murals for the ocean liners Paris (1922), Normandie (1922) and Ville d’Alger (1934). He also created designs for tapestries and painted murals for a number of public buildings. He was made a Knight of the Légion d’Honneur in 1926 and was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1945. 

His work is also in the permanent collections of a number of other museums, including the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris (Paysage d’Italie), Musée de Dijon (Le Parc de Saint-Cloud en automne), Musée de Tours (Salomé reçoit la tête de Saint Jean Baptiste), Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Red Vicars Seen from the Promenade on the Pincian Hill)., and the Imperial War Museum in London (Enfer) The largest group of his paintings in a museum is in the Musée Départmental de l’Oise in Beauvais which has fourteen of his works including Les Baignuers du Tibre.

A companion piece to this painting is in the Museum in Beauvais.