Goupil & Cie is an international auction house and merchant of contemporary art and collectibles. Jean-Baptiste Adophe Goupil founded Goupil & Cie in 1850. Goupil & Cie became a leading art dealership in 19th-century France, with its headquarters in Paris. Step by step, Goupil established a worldwide trade in fine art reproductions of paintings and sculptures, with a network of branches and agents in London and other major art capitals across Continental Europe as well as in New York City and Australia. Les Ateliers Photographiques, their workshop north of Paris, in Asnières, was instrumental in their expansion from 1869. The leading figure of Goupil & Cie was Jean-Baptiste Adolphe Goupil (1806–1893). His daughter Marie married the French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living artist by 1880." His range of his works includes historical paintings, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits, and other subjects. He is considered one of the most important painters from this academic period. He was also a teacher with a long list of students.