[5] In the years after the war Dantan exhibited a number of other paintings at the Salon including Hercules at the Feet of Omphale (1874), Death of Timophane (1875), The Nymph Salmacis (1876), Priam Demanding of Achillees the Body of Hector (1877), Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew (1878), Corner of a Studio (1880) and The Breakfast of the Model (1881).

For twelve years Dantan's companion was the model Agostina Segatori, who had also posed for artists such as Jean-Baptiste Corot, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Eugène Delacroix and Édouard Manet.

[9] At the 1870 exposition of the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts Dantan received an honorable mention for his submission for the prix de Rome.

[14] This and other Dantan studio paintings show in lifelike detail important features about the practice of classically trained artists which have been used for generations - the working environment, light quality, tools, reference materials, and methods.

They also reveal the importance of using a combination of references – live models and classical sculptures by master artists – to achieve lifelike and highly realized human form.

Describing a painting of a group of sailors following a clergyman going to bless the sea, another critic said in 1881 "he has written a page before which believers and skeptics must raise their hats".

[15] His Le déjeuner du modèle exhibited in the Salon in 1881 shows a model eating a plate of eggs in a break from the posing session.

Other paintings at this time included one of his mother outdoors in her invalid chair, her face sad, a pastoral portrait of a young blonde woman in a blue dress, full of life, and of a poor fisherman dining in his miserable cabin on a piece of bread and an onion.