Bathing Scene

Bathing Scene



Jean Léone Gérôme
Bathing Scene 1881
Signed ?
oil on canvas/huile sur toile
Size ? in (? cm)
Location:as of 2007 ?
French Orientalist

Almeh

Almeh


Jean Léone Gérôme
Almeh
Signed and dated upper right, 1882
oil on canvas/huile sur toile
Size 18.25 x 15 in (46.3 x 38.4cm)
Location:as of 2007 in Private Collection
French Orientalist

The End of the Session

Jean Léone Gérôme
The End of the Session ?/ La fin de la Seance
Signed ?
oil on canvas/huile sur toile
Size ? in( 48.3 x 40.6 cm)
Location:as of 2007 in Private Collection
French Orientalist

Arnaute and Dogs

Arnaute and Dogs/Arnaute et Chiens
Signed J.L. GEROME
Oil on canvas
13 x 10 inches (33 x 25.4 cm.)
Location as of 2007 ?
French Orientalist

This typical orientalist work from the high period of Gérôme’s career (widely regarded as the two decades after 1860) depicts one of the colorful irregulars of the Ottoman army, Albanian warriors known as arnauts or “bashi-bazouks,” probably in a Cairene setting. As in Arnauts of Cairo of 1861 (exhibited in Eastern Encounters at The Fine Art Society, London, 1978 no. 32), the stone gate provides a resting place for the man and his dogs, exhausted in the heat, perhaps after a mounted hunting expedition.

Selling Slaves

Selling Slaves in Rome

Jean Léone Gérôme
Selling Slaves in Rome/Vente désclaves à Rome
Signed ?
oil on canvas/huile sur toile
Size 64 x 57 cm
Location as of 2007 Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland
French Orientalist

Gerome with his Model

Prayer in the Mosque

Prayer in the Mosque



Jean Léone Gérôme
Prayer in the Mosque
Signed lower left, 1892
oil on canvas/huile sur toile
Size 25.75 x 36.5 in (65.5 x 92.7 cm)
Location:as of 2007 at Art Gallery, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
French Orientalist

The Cock Fight

Artist: Jean Léone Gérôme
Title: The Cock Fight/ Jeunes Grecs faisant battre des coqs
Signed lower left, 1846
Medium: Oil on canvas/huile sur toile
Size: 56.5 x 21.5 in (143 x 204cm)
Location:as of 2007 at Musee d'Orsay, Paris
French Orientalist

Gérôme started work on this canvas in 1846 after he had failed to win the Prix de Rome. Having missed his chance at entry to the Villa Medici, he feared a new rebuff and hesitated to exhibit his "Young Greeks Attending a Cock Fight". But, encouraged by his master, the academic painter Delaroche, he finally entered his painting in the Salon of 1847, where it was a great success.

In the "Neo-Grec" style, characterized by a taste for meticulous finish, pale colours and smooth brushwork, Gérôme portrays a couple of near-naked adolescents at the foot of a fountain. Their youthfulness contrasts with the battered profile of the Sphinx in the background. The same opposition is found between the luxuriant vegetation and the dead branches on the ground, and in the fight between the two roosters, one of which is doomed to die.

In the chorus of praise for the work, few commentators noticed the artist's disillusioned attitude. Hardly anyone but Baudelaire criticized the canvas, calling Gérôme the leader of the "meticulous school", and finding him weak and artificial. The public preferred the opinion of Théophile Gautier who saw in The Cock Fight "wonders of drawing, action and colour". At the age of twenty-three, Gérôme therefore made a brilliant entry into the art world and thereafter pursued the official career he had planned for himself, punctuated with honors and rewards.

Source: Musée d'Orsay

Phryne before the Areopagus

Phryne before the Areopagus

Artist: Jean Léone Gérôme
Title: Phryne before the Areopagus/ Phryné devant l'Aréopage 1861
Signed lower left
Medium: Oil on canvas/huile sur toile
Size: 31.5 x 50.5 in. (80.5 x 128 cm)
Location: as of 2007 at Hamburg Kunsthalle, Germany
French Orientalist

Detail


In my ARC book the colors of the robes are a more saturated red. I shall look for a better scan of this image.

In December 2007 I went to Hamburg and saw this painting at the Kunsthalle. I was struck by how smooth the surface was. When one looks at a Gerome it is very hard to figure out weather the painting was done on a canvas or a panel, since his handling of paint is such that no brush strokes or elevation of paint is visible.

At first glance the men in their red robes seem to be all wearing the same colored robes, yet Gerome changes the hues ever so slightly, to achieve a sense of depth and the illusion of space in a fairly narrow pictorial space. The closest figure to the viewer has the most saturated red garment on. This saturation decreases with each robe he paints and becomes not only more muted but also darker in value with each new person as they take their place in this confined space.

Another trick he employs to create a sense of space is that he lavishes great detail in both facial features and treatment of garments and props on those in the foreground. As I studied the paintings I noticed that he each new row of individuals was treated with decreasing attention to detail.

After the Bath

After the Bath

After the Bath
Signed lower right J.L. Gérôme 1881
oil on canvas/huile sur toile
Size 32.5 x 26.25 in
Location:as of 2007 in Private Collection
French Orientalist


The Sotheby's catalogue 1999 description of this work notes the following about the women in the painting:

"Gérome chooses not to portray them in erotic or 'splendid' poses. Instead, he observes the movement of muscle and flesh as the body turns, and records the manner in which the light falls on the skin; for the artist, the human body itself was a thing of beauty. The structure of the bones, the mechanism of the musculature, and the flexibility of the skin were wonders, beauties of nature to be observed, studied and reported. Consequently, both he and his friend Edgar Degas sometimes placed their models into awkward positions to reveal, in full splendor, the anatomy of the human body."

The Slave Market

The Slave Market

The Slave Market
Signed lower right Jean Léone Gérôme 1866
oil on canvas/huile sur toile
Size 33.25 x 25 in (84.3 x 63 cm)
Location:as of 2007 at Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown
French Orientalist

The Arab slave trade refers to the practice of slavery in West Asia, North Africa, East Africa, and certain parts of Europe (such as Sicily and Iberia) during their period of domination by Arab leaders. The trade mostly involved North and East Africans and Middle Eastern peoples (Arabs, Berbers, Persians, etc.). Also, the Arab slave trade was not limited to people of certain color, ethnicity, or religion. In the early days of the Islamic state—during the 8th and 9th centuries—most of the slaves were Slavic Eastern Europeans (called Saqaliba), people from surrounding Mediterranean areas, Persians, Turks, other neighbouring Middle Eastern peoples, peoples from the Caucasus Mountain regions (such as Georgia and Armenia) and parts of Central Asia (including Mamluks), Berbers, and various other peoples of varied origins as well as those of Black African origins. Later, toward the 18th and 19th centuries, slaves increasingly came from East Africa
Source:Wikipedia

Muezzins call to Prayer

Artist: Jean Léone Gérôme
Title: Muezzins call to Prayer
Signed lower left Jean Léone Gérôme 1879
Medium: oil on canvas/huile sur toile
Size: 139 x 26 in (91.4 x 66 cm)
Location:as of 2007 in Private Collection
French Orientalist

Public Prayer in the Mosque of Amr

Artist: Jean Léone Gérôme
Public Prayer in the Mosque of Amr 1870
Signed upper left on beam
Medium: Oil on canvas/huile sur toile
Size:35 x 29.5 in (89 x 75 cm)
Location: as of 2007 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
French Orientalist

Gérôme did many mosque paintings such as:
Interior of a Mosque
1.Prayer in the Mosque
2. Prayer in the Mosque
Sermon in the Mosque, 1903
Three figures praying in the Corner of a Mosque
Leaving the Mosque
Prayer in the Mosque of Caid Bey in Cairo, 1895
The Muessin, the Call to Prayer, 1879
Prayer on the Rooftops of Cairo, 1865
The Muezzin, Call to Prayer 1866
Young Greeks at the Mosque, 1865

Here is an image of the Mosque interior today
Photo take by Howard

Jean Léon Gérôme in his studio

Photo of Jean_Léon_Gérôme

This photo of Jean Léon Gérôme was taken in his studio. I have no further infortmation about this photo at the moment.

'Pygmalion' is on the upper left and the 'The Pipelighter' on the right.

An Arab and his Dogs, 1875

Artist: Jean Léone Gérôme
Title: An Arab and his Dogs, 1875
Signed right center
Medium: Oil on Canvas/huile sur toile
Size: 21.75 x 14.75 in. (55 x 37.5 cm)
French Orientalist

Because of their loose clothing men wore their pistols in holsters around their waist rather than on their hips.