Jules Arsène Garnier was born in Paris in 1847. He was a student of history and a pupil of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), a teacher who insisted on the highest standards of figure drawing. Although Garnier did not travel to the East, he did visit Spain and Holland, perhaps with Gérôme in 1874 to study the work of Frans Hals.

Just like his teacher, Garnier found his subjects from figures of cultural, historical and moral images of the ancient world. At the young age of twenty two, Jules Arsène Garnier was invited to participate at the annual exhibition at the Paris Salon of 1869 where he exhibited two works, "A Bather" and the lusty night picture "Mlle de Sombreuil, drinking a glass of blood".

With these two paintings, he earned his artistic breakthrough and later with the "Shuddering" another audience demanded more works from him. For the latter Garnier was inspired by reading Victor Hugo. In 1876 he painted "Le Supplice des Adultères" (Punishment of The Adulterers) a medieval genre picture of great coloristic effect.

For the great exhibition of the Paris Salon of 1877, Garnier created "The Favorite, which the head of the newly decapitated rival is brought". According to his critics, his reading of "Orientales" by Victor Hugo triggered the development of this work.
In 1879 Garnier created "The temptation": a pious hermit is brought by two nude female figures into severe qualms of conscience.