According to an academic hierarchy instituted at the beginning of what we call the modern epoch, the "Grand Genre" describes the most noble paintings i.e. historical, religious or mythological subjects. The artist had to be a humanist as well as a painter. This taste for historical painting remained strong throughout the 19th Century - consider for example the then famous frescos in the Beaux-arts in Paris by Paul Delaroche (1841) or the notoriety of artists contemporary with Laurens like Jean-Léon Gérôme, Luc-Olivier Merson, Fernand Cormon or Charles-Evariste Luminais. The practice of historical painting was favoured in art schools and was the subject of the famous Prix de Rome.
Neo-classical painting with its taste for ancient Greek and Roman subject matter gradually shifted into the more picturesque. Painting became influenced by the Orient, Africa or the South Seas and drew its inspiration from the Byzantine world (Honorius) and the western Middle Ages, etc. Paintings became emotionalised and dramatic, still resembling genre painting but leaving behind "la grande histoire" in preference for more personal and historical anecdotes.
The last flames of this golden age gradually died down and - ultimately - were extinguished completely. The sometimes stiff representations of the academic tradition increasingly represented the principal enemy of new experimental artists. It was overtaken by an efflorescence of the freer subjects of landscape and genre painting. Jean-Paul Laurens stands out as one of the last painters of his time to attempt to escape the academic in pursuit of this freer form of expression.
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