Henry Lerolle was born in Paris 3rd October 1848, the son of a bronze manufacturer and grandson of a bronze founder who had originally come from Lorrainne. The family were part of the Industrial bourgeoise, a growing and increasingly wealthy part of the social fabric.

A lover of music throughout his life Lerolle studied the violin before taking up painting under the tutelage of Louis Lamothe, himself a student of Ingres, before continuing his studies at the Academie Suisse. He exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1868 and over the following years received commissions to paint murals for the Hotel de Ville in Paris, and works for Churches in Paris, Caen and the Dominican monastery in Dijon.

Lerolle achieved considerable success painting subjects associated with social realism, often women working on the land, but also genre subjects still lifes and portraits. He mixed in artistic and musical circles, he was a friend and patron of Maurice Denis, close friends with Degas and Renoir, the latter painting both himself and on several occasions his daughters. Lerolle was also a patron, he owned paintings by Corot, Gauguin, Cassatt, Puvis de Chavannes, Renoir and Degas. On selling his ‘The Organ Rehearsal’, Paris Salon 1885, (Metropolitan Museum New York), to Durand Ruel he received 7,500 Francs and the balance in paintings by Degas.

Lerolle was awarded the Chevalier de Legion d’Honneur in 1889, he was an important member of the artistic community in Paris, helping in the foundation of the Society Nationale des Beaux Arts in 1889. He continued to receive commissions and exhibited at the Salon until 1922, painting in his studio at 20 Avenue Duquesne, he died 22nd April 1929.

His works can be seen in, Metropolitan Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco; Musee D’Orsay, Paris and museums in Tours, Nice, Mulhouse, Orleans, Carcassonne, Le Havre, Brussels, Bucharest