... too provocative for the jury of the French Salon was the story of playboy Rolla and callgirl Marion, in which the melancholic Rolla is facing bankruptcy and is on the brink of committing suicide. Because of the rejection by the jury, Gervex exposed the painting in a window of a furniture shop and attracted almost all Paris over a period of 3 months. The painting therefore boosted his career. We can assume he had pleasure in painting a later work concerning the jury of the Salon performing their work in front of another nude painting. (http://19thcenturyrealism.com/nude/) 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 1878 Rolla, based on a poem by Alfred de Musset, was rejected by the Salon de Paris for immorality, since it depicted a scene from the poem of a naked prostitute after having sex with her client. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Gervex)