(b Verdun, 27 Dec 1829; d Angers, 11 Nov 1900). French painter. He trained and briefly worked as a wig-maker in Verdun while also following a drawing course at the local art college. His success in winning all the art prizes earned him a small bursary to continue his studies in Paris. He entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1849, working in the studio of François-Edouard Picot and supplementing his income by producing copies of museum works and illustrations. In 1857 he won the Deuxième Prix de Rome and spent the next 17 years based in Rome, travelling from there to the rest of Italy, to Greece, Asia Minor, Turkey and Egypt, with occasional visits to Paris. Soon after arriving in Rome he received a state commission to paint a copy of Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love (c. 1515; Rome, Gal. Borghese) and also copied works for the Gobelins. His début at the Salon was made in 1863 with A New Vestal Virgin (1863; Verdun, Mus. Princerie). From this time he painted almost entirely classical subjects, for example Roman Ladies at the Tomb of their Ancestors (New York, Met.). In Miracle of the Good Goddess (1869; Ajaccio, Mus. Fesch), he treated a legend featuring a vestal virgin, one of his favourite themes. He occasionally painted biblical or historical subjects, which, as with all his work, were in an undistinguished academic style. His daughter Laura Leroux was also a painter.