(In a Private Collection, United States)
The scenes from Roman antiquity repeatedly appealed to Gérôme's talent,
notably in the case of the Games of the Circus, the dramatic value and
brilliant colour of which he fully appreciated. In _Pollice Verso_, he
shows us the victorious gladiator, who, in order to know whether or not
he is to despatch his adversary, turns a questioning glance towards the
Vestals, who invert their thumbs, decreeing death for the vanquished
and gasping opponent.]
His studio at Bougival held him for many a long day, while the season
lasted. While there, he worked with extraordinary assiduity, barely
giving himself time enough to appear among his guests and hastily
swallow a few mouthfuls of the mid-day meal. He owned at one time
another country house at Coulevon, near Vesoul, but this he sold to
one of his former pupils, Muenier. He remained none the less the chief
pride of his native town, where, even during the artist's life, there
was a street bearing the name of Gérôme.
His favourite summering place, however, was in the heart of Normandy
at Saint-Martin, near to Pont-Lévêque, where he possessed a delightful
property.
"He is a charming man, of rare integrity and fascination. Very simple,
too, like all men of real power, who need not exert themselves in
order to prove their strength." It is after this fashion that M. Jules
Claretie sums him up in his exquisite study of _Contemporary Painters
and Sculptors_. M. Frédéric Masson, his faithful friend, has drawn
the following excellent portrait of Gérôme: "A head firmly set upon a
long neck, features vigorously modelled in acute angles, sunken cheeks,
complexion bronzed, eyes brilliant and strangely black, moustache
obstinate and bristling, hair almost kinky, and sprouting in massive
clumps, ... a straight nose set in a lean face, ... figure exceedingly
slender and flexible, waist medium, but well modelled."
Such he appears in his painting of himself as a sculptor in his studio,
absorbed, in his alert and perennially youthful old age, by his new
task of making polychrome statues. M. Aimé Morot, his son-in-law, has
shown him to us in his intimate life, simple, natural, and at one and
the same time alert and caustic. We find him also thoroughly alive in
the fine bust by Carpeaux and in the medal by Chaplain, now in the
Luxembourg.
M. Dagnan-Bouveret saw him under another aspect. In the portrait he
has given us, we have the master authoritatively proclaiming his
convictions. This distinguished artist, by the way, was formerly a
pupil of Gérôme's. One day when he was complimenting the latter upon
his method of teaching, Gérôme replied, in his loud, assertive voice:
"When I undertake to do a thing, I do it to the very end. I am a man
with a sense of duty."
As professor at the École des Beaux-Arts he continued to fulfil his
duty for a period of forty years. While conducting his classes he
showed himself grave and stern, even sardonic when so inclined. In
front of a canvas too thickly coated, he would exclaim: "The paint shop
man will be pleased"; or perhaps he would move around to get a side
view and then play upon his words, saying: "How that picture stands
out!"
He had a good many foreigners in his studio, Spaniards such as La
Gandara, Americans like Bridgman and Harrison, and Russians such as
the celebrated and courageous Verestschagen who, according to M. Léon
Coutil, declared, in speaking of Gérôme, "Next to my dear Skobelof, he
is the most resolute man that I have ever met."
Gérôme was frank and unreserved in his opinions. Having become, so to
speak, the official representative of French painting, he was exposed
to repeated attacks. He did not hesitate to flout unmercifully and to
pursue with a veritable hatred such artists as had adopted formulas
opposed to his own,--and among them some of the biggest and the ones
least open to discussion. M. Besnard, who was not a pupil of his,
nevertheless owed him his Prix de Rome.
Many were the circumstances under which he showed his energetic
firmness; for example, when the Prince de la Moskowa wished to fix a
quarrel on him and prevent him from exhibiting _The Death of Mareschal
Ney_, he evoked this noble declaration from Gérôme: "The painter has
his rights as much as the historian."
[Illustration: PLATE V.--THE PRISONER