He took over the studio of Paul Delaroche in 1843 and taught a number of younger artists who became prominent, including Henry-Lionel Brioux,[1] Jean-Léon Gérôme, George du Maurier,[2] Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Louis-Frédéric Schützenberger, Alfred Sisley, Auguste Toulmouche, and James McNeill Whistler.

[5] It was through Vernet's recommendation that he was chosen by the American traveller John Lowell Jr. to accompany him on his journeys round the eastern Mediterranean, recording the scenes and ethnographic subjects they met with.

[5] On his recovery he proceeded to Paris and, establishing a modest studio in the rue de Université, began carefully to work out the ideas which had been slowly shaping themselves in his mind.

Mention is made of two decorative panels Diana leaving the Bath, and a Young Nubian as almost the first fruits of his genius; but these did not attract public attention until much later, and the painting by which he practically opened his artistic career was the Apocalyptic Vision of St John, sent to the Salon of 1840.

[5] In spite of the success of these first ventures, Gleyre retired from public competition, and spent the rest of his life in quiet devotion to his artistic ideals, neither seeking the easy applause of the crowd, nor turning his art into a means of aggrandizement and wealth.

He had an "infinite capacity of taking pains", and when asked by what method he attained to such marvelous perfection of workmanship, he would reply, "En y pensant toujours".

His other works include Deluge, which represents two angels speeding above the desolate earth from which the destroying waters have just begun to retire, leaving visible behind them the ruin they have wrought; the Battle of the Lemanus, a piece of elaborate design, crowded but not encumbered with figures, and giving fine expression to the movements of the various bands of combatants and fugitives; the Prodigal Son, in which the artist has ventured to add to the parable the new element of mother's love, greeting the repentant youth with a welcome that shows that the mother's heart thinks less of the repentance than of the return; Ruth and Boaz; Ulysses and Nausicaa; Hercules at the Feet of Omphale; the Young Athenian, or, as it is popularly called, Sappho; Minerva and the Nymphs; Venus and Adonis; Daphnis and Chloë; and Love and the Parcae.