15 Works, Today, May 10th. is Jean-Léon Gérôme's day, his story, illustrated with footnotes #128

Jean-Léon Gérôme  (1824–1904)

The Death of Caesar, between 1859 and 1867

Oil on canvas

Height: 85.5 cm (33.6 in); Width: 145.5 cm (57.2 in)

Walters Art Museum

Julius Caesar was assassinated in Rome on the Ides of March (March 15), 44 BC. Characteristically, Gérôme has depicted not the incident itself, but its immediate aftermath. The illusion of reality that Gérôme imparted to his paintings with his smooth, polished technique led one critic to comment, "If photography had existed in Caesar's day, one could believe that the picture was painted from a photograph taken on the spot at the very moment of the catastrophe." More on this painting

Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904) 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." The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits, and other subjects, bringing the academic painting tradition to an artistic climax. He is considered one of the most important painters from this academic period. He was also a teacher with a long list of students.

Jean-Léon Gérôme  (1824–1904)

Bathsheba, c. 1889 

Oil on canvas

Height: 60.5 cm (23.8 in); Width: 100 cm (39.3 in)

Private collection

According to the Hebrew Bible, "Bat Sheva," , "daughter of the oath"; was the wife of Uriah the Hittite and later of David, king of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah. She is most known for the Bible story in which she was summoned by King David who had seen her bathing and lusted after her. 

Bathsheba was from David's own tribe and the granddaughter of one of David's closest advisors. She was the mother of Solomon, who succeeded David as king, making her the Queen Mother. More on Bat Sheva

These evocative opening lines of the Old Testament story of David and Bathsheba have found expression in Western Art through the centuries. Blending the Biblical subject with a masterful exploration of light and the human form, Gérôme's interpretation of the story belongs to his most important works. More on this painting

Jean-Léon Gérôme was born at Vesoul, Haute-Saône. He went to Paris in 1840 where he studied under Paul Delaroche, whom he accompanied to Italy in 1843. He visited Florence, Rome, the Vatican and Pompeii. On his return to Paris in 1844, like many students of Delaroche, he joined the atelier of Charles Gleyre and studied there for a brief time. He then attended the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1846 he tried to enter the prestigious Prix de Rome, but failed in the final stage because his figure drawing was inadequate

Jean-Léon Gérôme  (1824–1904)

Young Greeks Attending a Cock Fight, 1846

Oil on canvas

Height: 143 cm (56.2 in); Width: 204 cm (80.3 in)

Musée d'Orsay 

Gérôme  painting The Cock Fight (1846) is an academic exercise depicting a nude young man and a very thinly draped young woman with two fighting cocks, with the Bay of Naples in the background. He sent this painting to the Paris Salon of 1847, where it gained him a third-class medal. This work was seen as the epitome of the Neo-Grec movement that had formed out of Gleyre's studio, and was championed by the influential French critic Théophile Gautier, whose review made Gérôme famous and effectively launched his career.

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904)

Greek Interior, The Women's Apartments, c. 1850

Oil on canvas

H. 66.95; W. 99.1 cm

New York, private collection

The Neo-Grec circle came about informally in 1847, when a group of young artists, passionate about a new vision of ancient Greece, would meet in the rue de Fleurus. Their approach was meant to be archaeologically accurate, breaking with the approximations of Greco-Roman antiquity current at the time. More on this painting

Jean-Léon Gérôme  (1824–1904)

Leda and the Swan, c. 1895

Oil on canvas

32 1/2" high x 29" wide

Private collection

Leda, in Greek legend, usually believed to be the daughter of Thestius, king of Aetolia, and wife of Tyndareus, king of Lacedaemon. She was also believed to have been the mother (by Zeus, who had approached and seduced her in the form of a swan) of the other twin, Pollux, and of Helen, both of whom hatched from eggs. Variant legends gave divine parentage to both the twins and possibly also to Clytemnestra, with all three of them having hatched from the eggs of Leda, while yet other legends say that Leda bore the twins to her mortal husband, Tyndareus. Still other variants say that Leda may have hatched out Helen from an egg laid by the goddess Nemesis, who was similarly approached by Zeus in the form of a swan.The divine swan’s encounter with Leda was a subject depicted by both ancient Greek and Italian Renaissance artists; Leonardo da Vinci undertook a painting (now lost) of the theme, and Correggio’s Leda (c. 1530s) is a well-known treatment of the subject. More Leda and The Swan

Gérôme abandoned his dream of winning the Prix de Rome and took advantage of his sudden success. His paintings The Virgin, the Infant Jesus and Saint John and Anacreon, Bacchus and Eros took a second-class medal at the Paris Salon in 1848. 

Jean-Léon Gérôme

Michelangelo in His Studio, c. 1849

51.5 x 45 cm

Oil on canvas

Private collection

Jean-Léon Gérôme  (1824–1904)

Portrait of a Woman, c. 1851

Oil on canvas

Height: 92.6 cm (36.4 in) ; Width: 73.7 cm (29 in) 

Art Institute of Chicago

In 1849, he produced the paintings Michelangelo (also called In his Studio) (See above) and A Portrait of a Lady (See above).

Jean-Léon Gérôme  (1824–1904)

Century of Augustus: Birth of Jesus Christ, c. 1855

Oil on canvas

Height: 6.2 m (20.3 ft); Width: 10.1 m (11 yd)

Picardy Museum

In 1852, Gérôme received a commission to paint a large mural of an allegorical subject of his choosing. The Age of Augustus, the Birth of Christ, which would combine the birth of Christ with conquered nations paying homage to Augustus, may have been intended to flatter Napoleon III, whose government commissioned the mural and who was identified as a "new Augustus. 

Jean-Léon Gérôme  (1824–1904)

Cleopatra and Caesar, c. 1866

Oil on canvas

Height: 183 cm (72 in); Width: 129.5 cm (50.9 in)

Private collection

According to Plutarch, Cleopatra, unable to find access to a busy Julius Caesar after his conquest of Egypt, had herself wrapped in bedding and delivered to his office by her friend Apollodorus the Sicilian. Gérôme has turned the bulky bedding into a fine carpet, a tradition continued by Bernard Shaw for his play Caesar and Cleopatra. A little dizzy from her uncomfortable jaunt, she balances herself with the fingers of her left hand on the back of the slave unwrapping her, as she stands up and, by her pose and expression, commands the attention of the dictator. More on this painting

Gérôme's "accurate" images seemed even more genuine as they unfailingly recreated the Orient that his contemporaries expected. They brought a stamp of authenticity to this fantasy. Gérôme, however, took many liberties, and few of his works are the result of direct observation. The purported historical, geographical or ethnographic settings in the majority of his paintings do not stand up to close analysis.

Jean-Léon Gérôme

The Duel After the Masquerade, c. 1857

Oil on canvas

39.1 cm × 56.3 cm (15.4 in × 22.2 in)

Musée Condé, Chantilly

Gérôme exhibited Suite d'un bal masqué at the Paris Salon of 1857, then in London the same year with the English merchant Gambart. The painting became famous almost overnight with critics of the Salon speculating about Gerome's sources for the incident depicted in the painting.

The scene is set on a gray winter morning in the Bois de Boulogne, trees bare and snow covering the ground. A man dressed as a Pierrot has been mortally wounded in a duel and has collapsed into the arms of a Duc de Guise. A surgeon, dressed as a doge of Venice, tries to stop the flow of blood, while a Domino clutches his own head. More on this painting

In 1851, he decorated a vase later offered by Emperor Napoleon III of France to Prince Albert, now part of the Royal Collection at St. James's Palace, London. He exhibited Greek Interior (See above), Souvenir d'Italie, Bacchus and Love, Drunk in 1851; Paestum in 1852; and An Idyll in 1853. More on Jean-Léon Gérôme

Gérôme succeeded in painting an image of the Orient that was immutable, untouched, and presented for a western audience. He thus managed to captivate a public that delighted in fixed images of an unchanging "elsewhere". More on Jean-Léon Gérôme

Jean-Léon Gérôme  (1824–1904)

Moorish Bath, c. 1870

Oil on canvas

Height: 50.8 cm (20 in); Width: 40.6 cm (15.9 in)

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Jean-Léon Gérôme  (1824–1904)

The Bath, circa 1880–1885

Oil on canvas

Height: 73.7 cm (29 in); Width: 59.7 cm (23.5 in)

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco 

Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1824 - 1904

AFTER THE BATH

Oil on canvas

32 1/2 by 26 1/4 in., 82.6 by 66.7 cm

Private collection

Beginning in the 1870s, Gérôme produced a group of bath scenes. In the present work a group of female bathers---with dampened hair and in various states of undress---gather around a reflective pool.  Each figure holds a distinctly different pose from the seated nude, her spine flexed, her neck softly twisted as she turns to her companion, to a shadowed figure standing in contrapposto, a saturated blue robe held across her pale body.  Unlike many of his contemporaries, Gérôme does not eroticize the bathing scene---instead, the work serves as a careful examination of the human body and its skeletal structure, subtle muscle movement, and textured skin.  From the 1870s, Gérôme's intense anatomy studies for his sculptures were further put to use in his paintings supported by observation of professional models in his Paris studios. More on this painting

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904)

Carpet Merchant in Cairo, c. 1887

Oil on canvas

H. 86.04; W. 68.74 cm

Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Schooled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and honored by the French Salon, Jean-Léon Gérôme was a prolific and popular artist. Like Delacroix, he traveled extensively in North Africa and the Middle East. The Carpet Merchant depicts the Court of the Rug Market in Cairo, which Gérôme had visited in 1885. More on this painting

Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824-1904)

The Carpet Merchant of Cairo, c. 1869

Oil on canvas

31 7/8 x 22 in. (81 x 55.9 cm)

Brooklyn Museum

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