A student of François-Édouard Picot and Isidore Pils, Clairin enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1861. Successful early in his career, he began exhibiting at the Salon in 1866. He executed decorative paintings for various public buildings in Paris and in the provinces, but is known primarily for his grand historical compositions, Symbolist themes, and the numerous works he executed of and for Sarah Bernhardt, the famous actress and accomplished sculptor who reigned over Parisian society with creativity. Clairin became the favored portraitist of the actress, depicting her in various roles across nearly one hundred paintings.

This mysterious and mythical scene catches three winged creatures, the center figure possibly Bernhardt herself, perched atop a craggy cliff presiding over the sea. Bernhardt had portrayed herself as a winged chimera–a mythological creature composed of various human and animal body parts–in a fantastical bronze inkwell more than a decade earlier than Clairin's painting and it is likely that he was familiar with her supernatural self-portrait.