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Jean-Leon
Gerome Wiki
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.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 (1843–1844). He visited Florence, Rome, the Vatican and Pompeii,
but he was more attracted to the world of nature. Taken by a fever, he
was forced to return to Paris in 1844. On his return he followed, like
many other students of Delaroche, into the atelier of Charles Gleyre and studied there for a brief time. He then attended the Ecole 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.
He tried to improve his skills by painting The Cockfight
(1846), an academic exercise depicting a nude young man and a lightly
draped girl with two fighting cocks and in the background the Bay of Naples. He sent this painting to the 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 (such as Henri-Pierre Picou (1824–1895) and Jean-Louis Hamon), and was championed by the influential French critic Théophile Gautier.
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 St John (private collection) and Anacreon, Bacchus and Cupid (Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, France) took a second-class medal in 1848. In 1849 he produced the paintings Michelangelo (also called In his studio) (now in private collection) and A portrait of a Lady (Musée Ingres, Montauban).
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 Bacchus and Love, Drunk, a Greek Interior and Souvenir d'Italie, in 1851; Paestum (1852); and An Idyll (1853).
In 1852 Gérôme received a commission by Alfred Emilien Comte de Nieuwerkerke, Surintendant des Beaux-Arts to the court of Napoleon III, for the painting of a large historical canvas, the Age of Augustus image of the painting.
In this canvas he combines the birth of Christ with conquered nations
paying homage to Augustus. Thanks to a considerable down payment, he was
able to travel in 1853 to Constantinople, together with the actor Edmond Got. This would be the first of several travels to the East : in 1854 he made another journey to 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.
In 1854 he completed another important commission of 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 exhibition of 1855 he contributed a Pifferaro, a Shepherd, A Russian Concert, The Age of Augustus and Birth of Christ.
The last was somewhat confused in effect, but in recognition of its
consummate rendering the State purchased it. However the modest
painting, A Russian Concert (also called Recreation in the Camp) was more appreciated than his huge canvases.
In 1856 he visited Egypt
for the first time. This would herald the start of many orientalist
paintings depicting Arab religion, genre scenes and North African
landscapes.
Gérôme's reputation was greatly enhanced at the Salon of 1857 by a collection of works of a more popular kind: the Duel: after the Masked Ball (Musée Condé, Chantilly), Egyptian Recruits crossing the Desert, Memnon and Sesostris and Camels Watering, the drawing of which was criticized by Edmond About.
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 Caesar (1859) Gérôme tried to return to a more severe class
of work, the painting of Classical subjects, but the picture failed to
interest the public. Phryne before the Areopagus, King Candaules and Socrates finding Alcibiades in the House of Aspasia
(1861) gave rise to some scandal by reason of the subjects selected by
the painter, and brought down on him the bitter attacks of Paul de Saint-Victor and Maxime Du Camp. At the same Salon he exhibited the Egyptian Chopping Straw, and Rembrandt Biting an Etching, two very minutely finished works.
He married Marie Goupil (1842–1912), the daughter of the international art dealer Adolphe Goupil. They had four daughters and one son. Upon his marriage he moved to a house in the Rue de Bruxelles, close to the music hall Folies Bergère. He expanded it into a grand house with stables with a sculpture studio below and a painting studio on the top floor.
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 fame had become such that he was invited, along with the most eminent French artists, to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.
The theme of his Death of Caesar (1867) was repeated in his historical canvas Death of Marshall Ney,
that was exhibited at the Salon of 1867, despite official pressure to
withdraw it as it raised painful memories. He returned successfully to
the Salon in 1874 with his painting Eminence grise (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). In 1896 he painted Truth Rising from her Well,
an attempt to describe the transparency of an illusion. He therefore
welcomed the rise of photography as an alternative to his photographic
painting. In 1902 he said "Thanks to photography, Truth has as last left
her well".
Jean-Léon Gérôme died in his atelier on 10 January 1904. He was found in front of a portrait of Rembrandt
and close to his own painting "The Truth". 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 that he had cast for his son Jean who had died in 1891.
He was the father-in-law of the painter Aimé Morot.
[edit] Selected works
[edit] Painting
Among Gérôme's best paintings may be named (many depict Eastern subjects) :
- Turkish Prisoner and Turkish Butcher (1863)
- Prayer (1865)
- The Slave Market (1867)
- Excursion of the Harem (1869)
- Louis XIV and Molière (1863) – Historical theme
- The Reception of the Siamese Ambassadors at Fontainebleau (1865)
- Death of Marshal Ney (1867)
[edit] Sculpture
Gérôme was also successful as a sculptor.
His first work was a large bronze statue of a gladiator holding his
foot on his victim, shown to the public at the Exposition Universelle of
1878. This bronze was based on the main theme of his painting Pollice verso (1872). The same year he exhibited a marble statue at the Salon of 1878, based on his early painting Anacreon, Bacchus and Cupid (1848).
Aware of contemporary experiments of tinting marble (such as by John Gibson) he produced Dancer with Three Masks (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Caen ), combining movement with colour (exhibited in 1902). His tinted group Pygmalion and Galatea
provided his inspiration for several paintings in which he depicted
himself as the sculptor who could turn marble into flesh; one example is
Pygmalion and Galatea (1890) (Metropolitan Museum, New York).
Among his other works are Omphale (1887), and the statue of the duc d'Aumale which stands in front of the château of Chantilly (1899).
He started experimenting 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 (1892), in ivory, bronze, and gemstones, attracted great attention at the exhibition in the Royal Academy of London.
The artist then began a series of Conquerors, wrought in gold, silver and gems: Bonaparte entering Cairo (1897); Tamerlane (1898); and Frederick the Great (1899).
[edit] Influence
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 other artists, writers and actors. George Sand entertained in the small theatre of the studio the great artists of her time such as the composers Hector Berlioz, Johannes Brahms and Gioachino Rossini and the novelists Théophile Gautier and Ivan Turgenev.
Summer Afternoon on a Lake, Ca. 1895
He started an independent atelier at his house in the Rue de Bruxelles between 1860 and 1862.
He was appointed as one of the three professors at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
He started with sixteen students, most who had come over from his own
studio. His influence became extensive and he was a regular guest of
Empress Eugénie at the Imperial Court in Compiègne.
When he started to protest and show a public hostility to "decadent fashion" of Impressionism, his influence started to wane and he became unfashionable. But after the exhibition of Manet in the Ecole in 1884, he eventually admitted that "it was not so bad as I thought".
[edit] Pupils
His students included:
[edit] Museums
His paintings and sculptures are exhibited in many museums and public art galleries, including:
- Musée d'Orsay, Paris online
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York online
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- Art Institute of Chicago online
- The Cincinnati Art Museum
- Detroit Institute of Arts online
- The Museum of Fine Arts Houston online
- J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. online
- Joslyn Art Museum [1]
- Milwaukee Art Museum online
- Minneapolis Institute of Arts online
- Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco online
- National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. online
- National Gallery, London online
- National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa online
- Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia online
- Phoenix Art Museum online
- Spencer Museum of Art
- The Haggin Museum, Stockton, California online
[edit] References
- Ackerman, Gerald (1986). The life and work of Jean-Léon Gérôme; catalogue raisonné. Sotheby's Publications. ISBN 0856673110.
- Ackerman, Gerald (2000). Jean-Léon Gérôme. Monographie révisée, catalogie raisonné mis a jour. ACR. ISBN 2867701376.
- Benezit E. - Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs - Librairie Gründ, Paris, 1976; ISBN 2700001567 (in French)
- Turner, J. - Grove Dictionary of Art - Oxford University Press, USA; new edition (January 2, 1996); ISBN 0195170687
- Catalogue of the exhibition in the Musée de Vésoul (August 1981). Jean-Léon Gérôme : peintre, sculpteur et graveur; ses oeuvres conservées dans les collections françaises et privées. Ville de Vésoul.
[edit] External links
 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh ed.). Cambridge University Press.
| Persondata |
| Name |
Gerome, Jean-Leon |
| Alternative names |
|
| Short description |
|
| Date of birth |
10 May 1824 |
| Place of birth |
Vesoul (Haute-Saône), France |
| Date of death |
10 January 1904 |
| Place of death |
Paris, France |
|
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