Retrato de Olívia Guedes Penteado

Gervex was a controversial French painter of his time. Born in 1852, when he was 26 years old, he saw one of his paintings, "Rolla," be banned from the French Salon because of immorality. The work, based on a poem by Alfred de Musset, depicts a naked prostitute shortly after having sex with a client. After this, although he was used of making nude portraits and mythological paintings, he devoted himself to exploring the modern representation of society. In 1913 he was elected to the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, and died in 1929.