Paul Alexandre Alfred le Roy

Paul Alexandre Alfred le Roy was born in Paris on 27 December 1860. Taken to Odessa at around age three, he began his artistic training there in 1873 at the local Ecole des Beaux-Arts, under teachers named in biographical sources as Jorini and Bauer. He returned to Paris around 1877 and entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, joining the atelier of Alexandre Cabanel; sources differ on whether his formal admission fell in 1877 or 1878.

At the Ecole, Leroy competed for the Prix de Rome, taking a second-place Second Grand Prix de Rome in 1882 and a first-place Second Grand Prix de Rome in 1884. He began exhibiting at the Salon des Artistes Francais in the early 1880s, winning a third class medal and a travel grant in 1882, and a Prix du Salon in 1884 for the painting Mardochee. Further travel, including an extended stay in Egypt from 1885 to 1887 and repeated visits to Algeria, Constantinople, and Persia, fed a lifelong Orientalist practice.

Leroy became a founding member of the Societe des Peintres Orientalistes Francais, for which he designed the society's founding emblem, and he showed with the group into the early 1930s; sources place the society's founding variously in 1893, 1895, or 1899. He won a second class Salon medal in 1888 and a silver medal at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. He was made a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur in 1908. Late in life he turned to writing, and the Academie francaise awarded him the Prix Louis-Paul-Miller in 1940 for his book Au seuil du Paradis des images. He died in Paris, in the 17th arrondissement, on 15 June 1942, at age 81.

Leroy's reputation rests mainly on his standing within the French Orientalist movement rather than on sustained critical writing found in the available sources. His long record of Salon medals, Prix de Rome recognition, and founding role in the Societe des Peintres Orientalistes Francais, for which he designed the founding emblem, mark him as a credentialed, institutionally embedded painter of the Orientalist genre rather than an outsider or a rediscovered figure.

Leroy's auction market is thin and historically priced. The highest price found for a work by the artist is USD 148,770 for In the harem, reported sold at Christie's London in 2007; the exact sale date could not be confirmed from available sources, and this figure comes from secondary market commentary rather than a primary auction database record, so it should be treated as indicative rather than definitive. Other documented results sit well below that level, including GBP 60,250 (including premium) for Les joueuses d'osselet, listed on Bonhams London's own lot page, though at least one market aggregator attributes an identical price to a 2021 Artcurial sale; the discrepancy could not be resolved from available sources. Market analysis from 2025 places typical prices for his paintings between about EUR 5,000 and EUR 100,000, with drawings and posters selling for less. No gallery or estate is currently documented as representing the artist.

There is no confirmed catalogue raisonne for Leroy. A 1974 French monograph, Un maitre de la peinture francaise Paul Leroy (1860 to 1942), Sa vie et son oeuvre, catalogued his principal paintings, but it functions as a biographical and selective survey rather than a comprehensive, actively maintained catalogue raisonne, and no certificate of authenticity program is documented. Attribution and provenance research should rely on auction house specialist departments and the museums that hold his work, including the Musee d'Orsay, the Louvre, and the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent. Because his market is thin, with few high value transactions, collectors should treat any single auction result, including the reported record for In the harem, as a data point rather than a reliable trend line.