It is difficult to enumerate in detail all the works of Gérôme, whose
originality and energy were inexhaustible. Only a short time before his
death he declared that with the help of the sketches contained in his
cupboards he had material enough to keep him busy for twenty-five years
longer.
Instead of attempting to draw up a chronological list of his paintings,
which would be only approximately correct, even if limited to the more
important, it is more profitable to study this conscientious artist
under his principal aspects.
Although he made some talented attempts, Gérôme neither was nor wished
to be a portrait painter, any more than a painter of modern life. He
had, however, as has been pointed out, all the necessary qualities
for this type which demands so much precision and assurance. In _The
Emperor Napoleon III Receiving the Siamese Ambassadors at the Palace
of Fontainebleau_, now in the museum at Versailles, there are eighty
portraits. The artist has represented himself, side by side with
Meissonier, and the story is told that a certain general accorded him a
sitting of only ten minutes.
Besides the large and somewhat sombre portrait of Rachel, which adorns
the Stairway of Artists at the Comédie-Française, and which was painted
from existing likenesses and from memory, there is scarcely anything
else to cite than the portrait of his brother while a student in
the Polytechnic School, a _Head of a Woman_ (1853, at the museum of
Nantes), those of M. Leblond, at Vesoul, mentioned by M. Guillaumin,
of M. A. T. (1864), of Cléry, the great lawyer, and of Charles
Garnier, the celebrated architect of the Opéra.
As a sculptor, Gérôme has left some admirable busts, among others those
of Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, bequeathed to the National Museum, of _General
Cambriels_, of _Henri Lavoix_, the _Monument of Paul Baudry_ destined
for La Roche-sur-Yon, and, most important of all, the _Equestrian
Statue of the Duc d'Aumale_, which is now to be seen at Chantilly, and
the model for which is at the museum of Besançon.
Gérôme had a sincere and profound love for antiquity; with him it was
not the enjoyment of a contemplative mind, a tranquil amateur art, but
that of an historian, an archaeologist coupled with the instinct of a
dramatist, a psychologue, let us say, who is eager to discover, in any
scene whatever, in the graceful or violent gestures of such and such
personages of bygone days, some general application. He was certainly
most anxious to suggest interesting or amusing parallels to modern
life, for, in spite of the dissimilarity of the settings, the tinsels,
the decorations, over which the artist laboured with an almost devout
care of minute detail, human nature to-day is always more or less close
to the human nature of Greece or Rome.
"Exhibit that picture, it will bring you honour," said Paul Delaroche
to his pupil, who had shown him, with much misgiving, the _Young Greeks
Occupied in Cock Fighting_. "It shows originality and style." And
that was his first success (1847). The grace of the young figures won
much admiration. Planche praised the harmony of the composition as a
whole. As to Théophile Gautier, he showed himself, as we have already
said, highly enthusiastic; he declared that the features of the boy
were drawn with extreme subtlety. "As to the cocks," he added, "they
are true prodigies of drawing, animation, and colour; neither Snyders,
nor Woenic, nor Oudry, nor Desportes, nor Rousseau, nor any of the
known animal painters have attained, after twenty years of labour,
the perfection which M. Gérôme has reached at the first attempt." Let
us note immediately that Gérôme was, as a matter of fact, a very great
painter of animals. His dogs, his horses, and his lions are the work of
a masterly observer.
Closely following upon the _Cock Fight_, we must recall _Anacreon
with Bacchus and Cupid_ (1848, Toulouse Museum) which Gérôme himself
characterized as a "lifeless picture," and which nevertheless earned
him a second class medal. Later on he was destined to treat this same
subject in marble (Salon of 1881). The polished and somewhat affected
grace of _Anacreon_ must have especially pleased the painter, because
in 1889 he produced a whole series of compositions of delicious
daintiness, entitled _Cupid Tipsy_. On the same order of ideas, mention
must be made of _Bacchus and Cupid Intoxicated_ (1850, Bordeaux
Museum), and in addition to these, under the head of what may be
called his Hellenic canvases,--in which he succeeded in conjuring up
with magic skill the splendours and graces of that immortal mother of
letters and arts, Greece beloved by the gods,--the following pictures,
_The Idyll_ (1853), full of charm and solid erudition; _The Greek
Interior_ (1856), of sure and penetrating art; _King Candaules_ (1859),
in which the sumptuous beauty of Nyssia illumines the bed-chamber of a
Heraclid, 700 years B.C., and in which the interest of the picturesque
anecdote is enhanced by the artist's marvellous documentary knowledge.
In the same group must be mentioned _Phryne before the Tribunal_ (1861,
reëxhibited in 1867), of charming subtlety, but with a little too much
emphasis, perhaps, on the irony of its psychology; and, of course,
_Socrates Seeking Alcibiades at the House of Aspasia_, analogous in
inspiration, and, as it happens, belonging to the same year; and lastly
_Daphnis and Chloe_ (1898).
[Illustration: PLATE VI.--THE LAST PRAYER