Paul-Albert Besnard (1849-1934) was a student of the academic painter Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889), won the prix de Rome in 1874 and was among the founders of the Société Nationale in 1890. Throughout his career his style remained in between academic and impressionistic. During the last thirty years of his life he held important positions in the Académie de France in Rome, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Académie française, the Académie de Saint Luc and the Royal Academy. Besnard's deeply incised etching lines cast his feline women in dark shadows and gave them a tragic accent. Melancholy, bored, and dramatically alluring (in a Gloria Swanson way), they help to define for us the decadence of the century. (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/67.793.15/)