The Orientalist painter Paul Alexandre Alfred Leroy began his artistic studies while living with his family in Odessa before becoming a pupil of Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889) in Paris. A travel scholarship enabled him to visit Egypt from 1885 to 1887. He also visited Algeria and Constantinople and learned Arabic (Benjamin, 2003, p. 73). Together with the painter Étienne Dinet (1861–1929), and the support of Baron Chassériau (1850–1934), he was a founding member of the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français in 1899 (Bénézit, 2006, p. 642). Leroy exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Artistes Français, of which he became a member in 1886. He won a third-class medal and a travel scholarship in 1882; the Salon prize in 1884, a second-class medal in 1888, and a silver medal during the Exposition Universelle of 1900. He was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 1908 (Bénézit, 2006, pp. 642–643).

Bénézit, E. (ed.) (2006). Le Roy, Paul Alexandre Alfred. In Dictionary of artists (Vol. 8, pp. 642–643). Paris: Gründ.

Benjamin, R. (2003). Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism, and French North Africa, 1880-1930, Oakland: University of California Press.