Drawing on recently discovered documents, letters, and sketchbooks, Hauptman provides new information on Gleyre's extensive voyage to the Middle East, his unorthodox attitudes toward his own paintings and their exhibition, the originality of his major works for French and Swiss patrons, and his unconventional teaching career that spanned twenty-five years. The author pays particular attention to never- before-published material, including journals and diaries of friends and colleagues with whom Gleyre worked and traveled, and sketches Gleyre made for his American patron, John Lowell, Jr. Together these volumes examine and illustrate more than fifteen hundred works, ranging chronologically from Gleyre's youthful portraits and figure studies of 1825 to his last painting, said to have been retouched on the day of his death. The result is a rare, significant overview of a little-known artist whose work merits greater attention.