Jean-Léon Gérôme

Born: Vésoul, Haute-Saone, 11 May 1824

Died: Paris, 10 January 1904

Nationality: French


Works by this Artist

Moorish Bath
Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1870

Background

son of a goldsmith

Studies

with Paul Delaroche (1840-43, Paris); with Charles Gleyre (1844); Ecole des Beaux- Arts

Career

1846 – begins exhibiting at Paris Salon; fails to win Prix de Rome

1847 – exhibitsThe Cockfight at Salon; Théophile Thoré and Théophile Gautier write positive reviews

1848 – Anacreon, Bacchus and Amor (Musée Augustins, Toulouse) bought by French State

1855 –exhibits Recreation in the Camp (private collection) at Exposition universelle (Paris)

1863 – appointed professor at Ecole des Beaux-Arts

1864 – elected to Institut de France

1878 – exhibits large bronze gladiator at the Exposition universell (Paris)

Travels

Italy (1843); Constantinople (1853); Egypt (1856)

Commissions from

Comte de Nieuwerkerke; Napoleon III; Prince Napoleon-Jérôme Bonaparte; French government

Important Artworks

The Cockfight, 1846 (Louvre, Paris)

The Snake Charmer, c. 1870 (Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown,MA)

Interior of a Mosque, 1890s (University of Rochester, NY)

Pygmalion and Galatea, c. 1890 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

See also Nadar's photographic portrait of Gérôme, c. 1900

Readings

Ackerman, Gerald M. Jean-Léon Gérôme: his Life, his Work, 1824-1904. Courbevoie: ACR, 1997

Glessner, R.W. “The Passing of Jean Léon Gérôme,” Brush and Pencil, vol. 14, no. 1 (April 1904): 54-76

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