Henri Gervex was a French painter, born in Paris, who studied under Alexandre Cabenel, Brisset and Eugene Fromentin. His early work belonged almost exclusively to the mythological genre, which served as an excuse for the painting of the nude, but not always in the best of taste. His Rolla of 1878, based on a poem by Alfred de Musset, was rejected by the jury of the Salon de Paris for immorality, since it depicted a scene from the poem of a naked prostitute after having sex with her client.

Gervex afterwards devoted himself to representations of modern life and achieved signal success with his Dr Pan at the Salptrihre ("The Operation"), a modernized paraphrase, as it were, of Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson...