Paul Delaroche trained first as a landscape painter under Louis Etienne Watelet before entering the studio of Antoine-Jean Gros. Delaroche built a career consisting primarily of exhaustively researched and minutely rendered paintings of historical events, most often set in France or England. Upon the death of his master, Gros, Delaroche took over the duties of teaching, directing the studio that Gros had inherited from Jacques-Louis David twenty years before. Delaroche taught for eight years before passing his students on to Marc Charles Gleyre, who continued to teach the principles of academic drawing and pictorial construction for nearly thirty more years.