Jules Joseph Lefebvre (ʒyl ʒɔzɛf ləfɛvʁ; 14 March 1836 24 February 1911) was a French figure painter, educator and theorist.
Lefebvre was born in Tournan-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne, on 14 March 1836. He entered the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 1852 and was a pupil of Léon Cogniet.
He won the prestigious Prix de Rome with his The Death of Priam in 1861. Between 1855 and 1898, he exhibited 72 portraits in the Paris Salon. Many of his paintings are single figures of beautiful women. Among his best portraits were those of M. L. Reynaud and the Prince Imperial (1874). In 1891, he became a member of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts.
He was professor at the Académie Julian in Paris. Lefebvre is chiefly important as an excellent and sympathetic teacher who numbered many Americans among his 1500 or more pupils. Among his famous students were Fernand Khnopff, Kenyon Cox, Félix Vallotton, Ernst Friedrich von Liphart, Georges Rochegrosse, the Scottish-born landscape painter William Hart, Walter Lofthouse Dean, and Edmund C. Tarbell, who became an American Impressionist painter. Another pupil was the miniaturist Alice Beckington. Jules Benoit-Lévy entered his workshop at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts.
Lefebvre died in Paris on 24 February 1911 and was buried in the Montmartre Cemetery with a bas-relief depiction of his painting La Vérité on his grave.
1853 Student at the École des Beaux-Arts
1859 Second place Prix de Rome
1861 His Death of Priam wins the Prix de Rome
1870 Académie Julian professor
1870 Légion d'honneur, Officer, named Commander from 1898
1891 Member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts
1861 The Death of Priam (won the Prix de Rome), École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris
1861
1863
1864 Roman Charity
1865 Portrait d'Antonio, modèle italien
1866 Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi
1868 Reclining Nude, Musée d'Orsay
1869 Le Réveil de Diane
1869 Portrait of Alexandre Dumas
1870 (The Truth) (1870), oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.