(In the Museum of Nantes)
Gérôme had travelled extensively in the East, for he loved its vigorous
colouring and picturesque customs. Here is a scene glimpsed from the
banks of the Nile, and he has transcribed it in this superb picture,
vibrant with colour and harmonious in composition.]
And when a prominent politician criticised the official curriculum
without proposing anything to take its place, it was, according to
M. Moreau-Vauthier, again Gérôme who replied: "Gentlemen, it is
easier to be an incendiary than a fireman!"
This firmness, however, did not prevent him, so this same biographer
points out, from being sensitive to such a degree that he could
not bear to watch a cat of Frémiet's preparing to devour a nest of
sparrows. He used to bring champagne and dainty viands as presents to
his pupils. His humour, so M. Moreau-Vauthier goes on to say, served
as a mask to hide his sentiment. Poilpot, to whom Gérôme was destined
later to give useful counsels for his panorama of Reischoffen, was
working prior to 1870 in his studio. One day he went to show him some
drawings. His master, having looked him over, inquired: "So, then, you
have no shirt?" "No, patron," he replied, "I never wear any." The next
day, Poilpot received a commission for a copy of an official portrait
of Napoleon III, together with an advance payment of 600 francs. This
pretty anecdote does as much honour to the pride of the one as to the
delicacy of the other.
Gérôme sincerely loved the youth, the fantasy, the gaiety of France,
and more especially of Paris. One perceives it in reading the sparkling
preface which he wrote for M. Miguel Zamacoïs' _Articles of Paris_,
blithely illustrated by M. Guillaume. He was not too proud to appear at
costume balls, nor to continue to take an interest in them even after
he had ceased to attend them. He once put his name to a picturesque
sign for a doll shop in the "Old Paris" exhibit at the Exposition. For
an advertisement contest he painted a dog wearing a monocle, with this
amusing inscription and play on words, "_O pti cien_" (_0 petit chien_,
i.e., O little dog). He amused himself by sending to a toy competition,
organized by the prefect of police, a little Pompeiian saleswoman
holding a basket of various toys, and a diminutive police officer
brandishing a white club.
Gérôme had always wished for a sudden and brusque death, "without
physic and without night-cap." He was spared both physical and moral
decline. At the age of seventy-nine he climbed the stairs, four steps
at a time, and sprang upon moving omnibuses running. He died suddenly
of a cerebral congestion, on his return from a dinner which he had
attended together with his colleagues of the Institut, January 10, 1904.