Jean-Léon Gérôme | Academic / Orientalist painter | Tutt'Art@

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) 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, and in addition to being a painter, he was also a teacher with a long list of students.

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 (1843-44).

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 young man and a lightly draped young woman 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.

Important commissions

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.

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 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.

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.

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, and The Age of Augustus, the 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.

Orientalism

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.

He started an independent atelier at his house in the Rue de Bruxelles between 1860-1862.

Honours

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.

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.

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.

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 the Bible while subjects 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.

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".

In 1896 Gérôme 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 at last left her well".

Death

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.

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). | © Encyclopædia Britannica. Cambridge University Press.

Jean-Léon Gérôme (Vesoul, 1824 - Parigi, 1904) è stato un pittore e scultore Francese.

Completata la formazione scolastica, all'età di 16 anni si reca a Parigi con una lettera di presentazione per il pittore Paul Delaroche, che diviene il suo maestro e lo educa ad una pittura di genere storico, secondo uno stile che sembra fondere la Scuola Neo-classica con il Romanticismo.

In seguito Gérôme accompagna il maestro a Roma trascorrendo molto tempo a studiare le antichità.

Nel 1844 si ammala di febbre tifoidea ed è costretto a rientrare a Parigi andando a lavorare nell’atelier del famoso pittore svizzero Charles Gleyre.

Data l’impostazione classica del maestro (contrapposta al Realismo che si va affermando in pittura), i suoi allievi vengono definiti Pompeisti o Neo-Greci.

Al rientro di Delaroche a Parigi, Gérôme lascia il laboratorio di Gleyre per diventare il suo assistente.

Delaroche gli affida l’incarico di dipingere una riproduzione per la Regina (la prima di una lunga serie di commissioni ufficiali) e lo incoraggia a preparare quadri per il Salon.

Nell’edizione del 1847 del Salon Gérôme espone l’opera Combat de coqs che si aggiudica la medaglia per la terza classe.

Continua a partecipare al Salon anche negli anni successivi acquisendo fama e riconoscimenti.

La sua originalità risiede in una fusione del tutto originale fra il vecchio stile classico e la contemporanea obiettività del Realismo.

Dopo un viaggio in Turchia nel 1855, l’interesse per il mondo orientale lo spinge in Egitto per la preparazione del Salon del 1857, nel quale mostra le sue prime opere egiziane vedendo crescere notevolmente la propria reputazione.

Grazie anche al matrimonio con Marie Goupil, figlia di un rinomato commerciante d’arte internazionale, a partire dal 1862 le sue tele conoscono un notevole incremento delle vendite. Dopo la nomina a professore presso la nuova École Nationale Supérieure Des Beaux-Arts e l’elezione a membro dell’Istituto di Francia, nel 1868 parte per un’escursione di tre mesi in Medio Oriente per raccogliere un nuovo repertorio di temi per i suoi dipinti.

Al termine della guerra franco-prussiana del 1870 Gérôme è al culmine della sua carriera: ospite regolare dell’Imperatrice, professore all’École, insignito della Legion d’Honneur e membro onorario dell’Imperiale Istituto e della British Royal Academy.

Al Salone Internazionale di Parigi del 1878 fa il suo debutto come scultore con il bronzo a grandezza naturale dei Gladiatori.

Negli anni seguenti continua scolpire statue e busti in marmo, avorio, metalli e gemme con successo sempre maggiore, tanto che nel 1890 lo Stato acquista il suo Tanagra per 10 mila franchi.