Jean-Léon Gérôme
Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. 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.
Contents
Early life
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.<ref name=Britannica>Chisholm, Hugh, ed. "Gérôme, Jean Léon". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University, 1901.</ref>
His 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 (including Henri-Pierre Picou and Jean-Louis Hamon), and was championed by the influential French critic Théophile Gautier, whose review made Gérôme famous and effectively launched his career.<ref name=Whirling />
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. In 1849, he produced the paintings Michelangelo (also called In his Studio) and A Portrait of a Lady.
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, Souvenir d'Italie, Bacchus and Love, Drunk in 1851; Paestum in 1852; and An Idyll in 1853.<ref name=Britannica />
Important commissions
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."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> A considerable down payment enabled Gérôme to travel and research, first in 1853 to Constantinople, together with the actor Edmond Got, and in 1854 to Greece and Turkey and the shores of the Danube, where he was present at a concert of Russian conscripts making music under the threat of a lash.<ref>Rosenthal, Donald A. 1982. Orientalism, the Near East in French painting, 1800–1880. Rochester, N.Y.: Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester. p. 77. Template:ISBN</ref>
In 1853, Gérôme moved to the Boîte à Thé, a group of studios in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris. This would become a meeting place for artists, writers and actors, where George Sand entertained the composers Hector Berlioz, Johannes Brahms and Gioachino Rossini and the novelists Théophile Gautier and Ivan Turgenev.
In 1854, he completed another important commission, decorating the Chapel of St. Jerome in the church of St. Séverin in Paris. His Last Communion of St. Jerome in this chapel reflects the influence of the school of Ingres on his religious works.
To the Universal Exhibition of 1855 he contributed Pifferaro, Shepherd, and The Age of Augustus, the Birth of Christ, but it was the modest painting Recreation in a Russian Camp that garnered the most attention.<ref name=Britannica />
Orientalism
In 1856, he visited Egypt for the first time. Gérôme's itinerary followed the classic grand tour, up the Nile to Cairo, across to Faiyum, then further up the Nile to Abu Simbel, then back to Cairo, across the Sinai Peninsula through Sinai and up the Wadi el-Araba to Jerusalem and finally Damascus.<ref>Gerald M. Ackerman: Jean-Léon Gérôme: Eight Oil Sketches. 5 December 2004</ref> This would herald the start of many orientalist paintings depicting Arab religious practice, genre scenes and North African landscapes.
Among these are paintings in which the Oriental setting is combined with depictions of female nudity. The Slave Market, The Large Pool of Bursa, Pool in a Harem, and similar subjects were works of imagination in which Gérôme combined accurately observed Middle Eastern architectural details with idealized nudes painted in his Paris studio.<ref>e.g. Nochlin (1983); Toledano (1998, 4–6); Lees (2012)</ref> (In 2019, the far-right German party, Alternative for Germany, used The Slave Market in a campaign poster in the 2019 European Parliament election.)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In his travels, Gérôme collected artefacts and costumes for staging oriental scenes in the studio, and also made oil studies from nature for the backgrounds. In an autobiographical essay of 1878, Gérôme described how important oil sketches made on the spot were for him: "Even when worn out after long marches under the bright sun, as soon as our camping spot was reached I got down to work with concentration. But Oh! How many things were left behind of which I carried only the memory away! And I prefer three touches of color on a piece of canvas to the most vivid memory, but one had to continue on with some regret."<ref>Gérôme, Notes, "J. L. Gérôme á la montée de sa carrière, fait la balance", in: Bulletin de la société d'agriculture, lettres, sciences et arts de la Haute-Saône, 1980, pp. 1–30</ref>
Gérôme's reputation was greatly enhanced at the Paris Salon of 1857 by his display of Egyptian Recruits Crossing the Desert, Memnon and Sesostris, Camels Watering, and Suite d'un bal masqué (painted for the duc d'Aumale, now in the Musée Condé in Chantilly; a copy made by Gérôme in 1859 is in the Walters Art Museum).<ref name="Musée Condé">Template:Cite web</ref>
Return to Classical subjects
In 1858, he helped to decorate the Paris house of Prince Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte in the Pompeian style. The prince had bought his Greek Interior (1850), a depiction of a brothel also in the Pompeian manner.
In Ave Caesar! Morituri te Salutant, shown at the Salon of 1859, Gérôme returned to the painting of Classical subjects, but the picture failed to interest the public. King Candaules (1859) and Phryne Before the Areopagus and Socrates Seeking Alcibiades in the House of Aspasia (both 1861) gave rise to some scandal by reason of the subjects selected by the painter, and inspired bitter attacks by Paul de Saint-Victor and Maxime Du Camp. Also at the 1861 Salon he exhibited Egyptian Chopping Straw and Rembrandt Biting an Etching, two very minutely finished works.
In 1863, he married Marie Goupil (1842–1912), the daughter of the international art dealer Adolphe Goupil. They would have four daughters and one son. Upon his marriage he moved to a house in the Rue de Bruxelles, close to the Folies Bergère. He expanded it into a grand house with stables with a sculpture studio below and a painting studio on the top floor.<ref name=Britannica />
Atelier at École des Beaux-Arts
Gérôme was appointed as one of the three professors at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He started with sixteen students. Between 1864 and 1904, more than 2,000 students received at least some of their art education through Gérôme's atelier at the École des Beaux-Arts. Places in Gérôme's atelier were limited, keenly sought and highly competitive. Only the best students were admitted and aspirants considered it an honour to be selected. Gérôme progressed his students through drawing from antique works, casts and followed by life study with live models generally selected on the basis of their physique, but occasionally for their facial expression in a sequence of exercises known as the academie. Students drew parts of a bust before the entire bust, then parts of the live model before preparing full figures. Only when they had mastered sketching were they permitted to work in oils. They were also taught to draw clearly and correctly before consideration of tonal qualities. In his school, the floor sloped so that students had the fullest view of the model from the rear of the room. Students sat around any model in order of seniority, with the more senior students towards the rear so that they could draw the full figure, while the more junior members sat towards the front and concentrated on the bust or other part of the anatomy.<ref name=Aloysius></ref>Template:Rp
According to John Milner, who studied with Gérôme, his atelier was the most "riotous" and "lewd" of all the studios at Beaux-Arts. Students were treated to bizarre initiation rites which included slashing each other's canvases, throwing students down stairs, out of windows, and onto upturned stools, staging fencing matches on the model's dais, in the nude and with paintbrushes loaded with paint.Template:R
Gérôme attended every Wednesday and Saturday, demanding punctilious attendance to his instructions. His reputation as a severe critic was well-known. One of his American students, Stepen Wilson Van Shaick, commented that Gérôme was "merciless in judgement" yet possessed a "singular magnetism."Template:R Although Gérôme was very demanding of his students, he offered them considerable assistance outside Beaux-Arts, inviting them to his personal studio, making recommendations to the Salon on their behalf, and encouraging them to study with his colleagues.Template:R
Honors and later works
Gérôme was elected, on his fifth attempt, a member of the Institut de France in 1865. Already a knight in the Légion d'honneur, he was promoted to an officer in 1867. In 1869, he was elected an honorary member of the British Royal Academy. The King of Prussia, Wilhelm I, awarded him the Grand Order of the Red Eagle, Third Class. His influence became extensive and he was a regular guest of Empress Eugénie at the Imperial Court in Compiègne. Along with the most eminent French artists, he was inited to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.<ref name=Britannica />
The Execution of Marshal Ney was exhibited at the Salon of 1868. On behalf of Ney's descendants, Gérôme was asked to withdraw the painting, but did not comply. The general reception was very split and the 1868 Salon marked the beginning of a lasting divide between Gérôme and many French art critics, who accused him relying of literary techniques, of commercialising art, and of bringing politics into art. Henri Oulevay made a caricature where Gérôme is depicted in front of the wall with the art critics as the firing squad.<ref name="mitchell98">Template:Harvnb</ref>
Gérôme returned successfully to the Salon in 1873 with his painting L'Eminence Grise (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), a colorful depiction of the main stair hall of the palace of Cardinal Richelieu, popularly known as the Red Cardinal (L'Eminence Rouge), who was France's de facto ruler under King Louis XIII beginning in 1624. In the painting, François Le Clerc du Trembly, a Capuchin friar dubbed L'Eminence Grise (the Gray Cardinal), descends the ceremonial staircase immersed in reading the Bible while all others either bow before him or fix their gaze on him. As Richelieu's chief adviser, L'Eminence Grise was called "the power behind the throne," which became the known definition of his title.<ref>Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: L'Eminence Grise</ref>
Sculpture
In his fifties, Gérôme took up sculpture. His first work was a large bronze statue of a gladiator holding his foot on his victim, based on his painting Pollice Verso (1872) and shown to the public at the Universal Exhibition of 1878. The same year he exhibited a marble statue at the Salon of 1878, based on his early painting Anacreon, Bacchus and Eros (1848).
Aware of contemporary experiments of tinting marble (such as by those by John Gibson), he produced Dancer with Three Masks combining movement with color, first exhibited in 1902 and now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen. His tinted group Pygmalion and Galatea (1891) was based on several paintings in which he depicted the sculptor who could turn marble into flesh, examples of which (c. 1890) are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smart Museum of Art.
Among his other sculptures are Omphale (1887) and the statue of the duc d'Aumale which stands in front of the Château de Chantilly (1899).
He experimented with mixed ingredients, using for his statues tinted marble, bronze and ivory inlaid with precious stones and paste. His Dancer was exhibited in 1891. His lifesize statue Bellona, in ivory, bronze, and gemstones, attracted great attention at the 1892 exhibition in the Royal Academy of London.
Gérôme then began a series of conquerors, wrought in gold, silver and gems: Bonaparte Entering Cairo (1897), Tamerlane (1898), and Frederick the Great (1899).<ref name=Britannica />
Gérôme and Impressionism
During the last decades of his career, as his own work fell out of fashion, Gérôme was harshly critical of Impressionism. In 1894, he caused a scandal over his opposition to the Caillebotte bequest to the state which eventually became the foundation of the Musée d’Orsay collection. He organized a public demonstration in his atelier and gave interviews to reporters, including these comments published in the journal L’Éclair:
The Institut de France cannot remain still before such a scandal…How can the government dare welcome such a collection of inanities into a museum? Why, have you seen the collection? The state, the ward of such junk!… What lessons are our young artists going to receive from now on? They’ll all start to do Impressionism! Ah! these people believe they are painting nature, nature so admirable in all its manifestations! What pretension! Nature is not for them! This Monet, do you remember his cathedrals? And that man used to know how to paint! Yes, I’ve seen good things by him, but now!<ref name=Whirling>Template:Cite web</ref>
Similarly he objected to the Manet memorial exhibition at the École des Beaux Arts in 1884. But he did attend the opening, after which he paid Manet the backhanded compliment that the exhibition was “not so bad as I thought.”<ref name=Whirling />
Truth—“Our Mona Lisa”
Beginning in the mid-1890s, in the last decade of his life, Gérôme made at least four paintings personifying Truth as a nude woman, either thrown into, at the bottom of, or emerging from a well. The imagery was inspired by an aphorism of the philosopher Democritus, "Of truth we know nothing, for truth is in a well."<ref></ref>
Truth Coming Out of Her Well, Armed with Her Whip to Chastise Mankind was exhibited in the Salon du Champ de Mars of 1896.<ref></ref> It has been assumed that the painting was a comment on the Dreyfus affair,<ref></ref><ref></ref> but art historian Bernard Tillier argues that Gérôme's images of Truth and the well were part of his ongoing diatribe against Impressionism.<ref name=tillier>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Bertrand Tillier. | Gérôme et la vérité en peinture, Autour de La Vérité sortant du puits…. Regarder Gérôme, Musée d'Orsay, Dec 2010, Paris, France.</ref>
Gérôme himself invoked the metaphor of Truth and the well in a preface he wrote for Émile Bayard's Le Nu Esthétique, published in 1902, to characterize the profound and irreversible influence of photography:
La photographie est un art. La photographie force les artistes à se dépouiller de la vieille routine et à oublier les vieilles formules. Elle nous a ouvert les yeux et forcé à regarder ce qu'auparavant nous n'avions jamais vu, service considérable et inappréciable qu'elle a rendu à l'Art. C'est grâce à elle que la vérité est enfin sortie de son puits. Elle n'y rentrera plus. (Photography is an art. It forces artists to discard their old routine and forget their old formulas. It has opened our eyes and forced us to see that which previously we have not seen; a great and inexpressible service for Art. It is thanks to photography that Truth has finally come out of her well. She will never go back.)<ref>Bayard, Émile; preface by Jean Léon Gérôme. Le Nu Esthétique. Paris: Bernard, 1902.</ref>
In 2012, the Musée Anne de Beaujeu in Moulins, France, which now owns the painting, mounted the exhibition La vérité est au musée ("Truth is at the Museum"), which collected numerous drawings, sketches, and variants made by Gérôme, and by other artists, relating to the painting and its theme. The multiple interpretations of the painting's enigmatic meaning prompted one of the museum's curators to say, "C'est notre Joconde à nous." ("This is our Mona Lisa.")
Death
On 31 December 1903, Gérôme wrote to his student and former assistant Albert Aublet, "I begin to have enough of life. I’ve seen too much misery and misfortune in the lives of others. I still see it every day, and I’m getting eager to escape this theatre." He was to live just ten more days.
On 10 January 1904, "the maid found him dead in the little room next to his atelier, slumped in front of a portrait of Rembrandt and at the foot of his own painting Truth"—but the source for this anecdote, the biographer Moreau-Vauthier, does not specify which painting of Truth. He was 79.
At his own request, he was given a simple burial service without flowers. But the Requiem Mass given in his memory was attended by a former president of the Republic, most prominent politicians, and many painters and writers. He was buried in the Montmartre Cemetery in front of the statue Sorrow, which he had cast for his son Jean who had died in 1891.
His legacy lived on through an enormous body of work in collections around the world, and thousands of students. He also was the father-in-law of the painter Aimé Morot.
See also
References and sources
- Bayard, Émile; preface by Jean Léon Gérôme. Le Nu Esthétique. Paris: Bernard, 1902.
- Benezit E. - Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs - Librairie Gründ, Paris, 1976; Template:ISBN (in French)
- Laurence des Cars, Dominque de Font-Rélaux and Édouard Papet (ed.), The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), Paris: SKIRA, 2010
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. "Gérôme, Jean Léon". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University, 1901. Press.
- Hering, Fanny Field; introduction by Augustus St. Gaudens. Gérôme: The Life and Works of Jean-Léon Gérôme. New York, Cassell Publishing Company, 1892.
- Lees, Sarah. 2012. “Jean-Léon Gérôme: Slave Market”. In Nineteenth-century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, edited by S. Lees. 359–363. Williamstown, Mass: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.
- Moreau-Vauthier, Charles. Gérôme: peintre et sculpteur (in French). Hachette, 1906.
- Nochlin, Linda. 1983. “The Imaginary Orient”. Art in America 71(5): 118–31, 187–91.
- O'Sullivan N. Aloysius O'Kelly: Art, Nation, Empire|publisher=Field Day Publications, 2010.
- Scott C. Allan and Mary Morton (ed.), Reconsidering Gérôme, Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010, in: Art Bulletin 94 (2012), No. 2, pp. 312–316
- Toledano, Ehud R. 1998. Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East. Seattle/London: University of Washington Press.
- Turner, J. – Grove Dictionary of Art – Oxford University Press, USA; new edition (January 2, 1996); Template:ISBN
External links
- Fin de partie: A Group of Self-Portraits by Jean-Léon Gérôme by Susan Waller
- La Vérité est au musée—press kit for the 2012 exhibit at the Musée Anne-de-Beaujeu (in French)
- Jean-Léon Gérôme/Art Renewal Center Over 350 Gerome images, list of students with examples of work, biography, and letters
- Artencyclopedia.com page on Gérôme
- www.jeanleongerome.org nearly 300 images by the artist
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- Jean-Léon Gérôme
- 19th-century Painters
- French Painters
- 20th-century French painters
- Academic Art
- Members of the Académie des beaux-arts
- Burials at Montmartre Cemetery
- Orientalist painters
- Orientalism
- 20th-century French sculptors
- 19th-century French sculptors
- French Sculptors
- Nudes
- Légion d'honneur
- The French Royal Academy
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