Howard Roberts, like his fellow Philadelphian Thomas Eakins, was among the first of two generations of Americans who flocked to Paris to study art. Although both he and Eakins mastered the French academic style of portraying the human figure, Roberts remained more closely tied to contemporary French art and, unlike Eakins, returned to Paris to work on major projects such as La Première Pose. When it was shown at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, this sculpture was acclaimed as an unequaled tour de force of American sculpture for the subtlety and realism of its modeling, a match in technique for any French work. Its subject, a young model overcome with shyness at posing nude for the first time, was considered, if anything, "too French" in conception. Critics claimed that it was a deliberately scandalous excuse to portray the female nude with sensual realism. Its defenders, however, argued that it was a chaste and sympathetic characterization of the model's predicament. In any case, La Première Pose brought a new sophistication of subject and technique to American sculpture. Darrel Sewell, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 286.