Gérôme has his allotted place among the illustrious French painters
of the Nineteenth Century. He achieved success, honours, official
recognition; and he deserved them, if not for the compelling
personality of his temperament, at least for his assiduous industry,
his accurate, methodical, and picturesque way of seeing people and
things, and the amazing and fertile variety both of his choice and his
interpretation of subjects.
He was a pupil of Paul Delaroche and seems to have inherited the
latter's adroitness in seizing upon the one salient and emotional
detail in a composition. Like that historian-painter of the _Death of
the Duc de Guise_, Gérôme excelled in always giving a dramatic stage
setting to the persons and the events which he knew how to conjure up
with such learned and scrupulous care.
In spite of his versatility, and notwithstanding that many a vast
canvas has demonstrated his ingenious and resourceful talent, he takes
his place beside Meissonier because of the extreme importance that he
attached to accuracy and precise effects.
[Illustration: PLATE II.--RECEPTION OF THE SIAMESE AMBASSADORS