Oriental tales of the disgraced French artist Jean-Leon Gerome

Sometimes even great talent is forgotten. This is precisely the situation faced by the wonderful French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme, who lived and worked in the 19th century. Today everyone knows his paintings, but for more than a hundred years the painter was hardly remembered. The reason was Jerome’s quarrelsome character, which provided him with an entire army of ill-wishers.

Jean-Leon Jerome was born in the city of Vesoul, in eastern France, in 1824. He was generously endowed with talents and realized himself as a painter, sculptor and teacher. The artist was a supporter of academicism all his life and painted canvases with oriental themes and in the so-called “Pompeian style.”

Jerome was well known in France in the second half of the 19th century and enjoyed great authority. But then he came into conflict with supporters of impressionism and fell into disgrace. He opposed a posthumous exhibition of Manet at the École des Beaux-Arts. The academician Jerome did not consider the impressionists to be artists, since he recognized only realism in art.

Jerome had few supporters, because at that time the Impressionists were held in high esteem. The elderly artist began to be hounded in the press and condemned in society. At the turn of the century, the scandalous painter found himself out of work and was forced to paint paintings “on the table.” They didn’t want to buy his paintings or take them to exhibitions.

After the death of Jean-Leon Jerome, the boycott of his works continued, and then the brilliant master was simply forgotten. It is worth noting that the artist was not at all an enemy of everything new. He was delighted with the advent of photography and more than once said that the future belonged to this new art form. During his lifetime, he became a recipient of several high government awards. But all this did not prevent him from being labeled an “adept of dead art,” which is exactly how supporters of academicism were branded at the beginning of the 20th century.

Jerome’s wonderful paintings were returned to the viewer only in the 70s. At this time, society was fed up with innovations and interest in salon-academic art reawakened. The first catalog of the artist's works appeared only in the early 80s, almost 80 years after his death. The first major exhibition of Jean-Leon Gerome took place only in 2011.

Most of Jerome's paintings are devoted to oriental themes. The heroes of his paintings are harem dwellers, eunuchs, slave traders, warriors and Bedouins. The author was incredibly demanding of his creations and carefully worked out every detail.

He also painted many paintings dedicated to the ancient period. Some of them are of a genre nature, but there are works associated with great personalities, as well as mythology. Jean-Leon Gerome also painted several portraits of Napoleon in an oriental setting, which were highly appreciated by the artist’s contemporaries.

It remains to add that descendants are not always fair to geniuses. The Spanish Renaissance painter José de Ribera was recorded as a bloodthirsty maniac, and was acquitted only 400 years later.