(In a Private Collection, United States)
In the mournful immensity of African solitudes, the king of planets
mounts towards the zenith, darting his fires upon the arid land that he
consumes, while the other king of the desert, the lion, contemplates
the triumphant ascension of his rival in the sky. Gérôme has rendered
the scene with an eloquence all the greater because he has employed
such simple means.]
Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, the Duc de Luynes
undertook, in collaboration with the architect Dubau, to produce an
example of chryselephantine sculpture, which cost him more than 500,000
francs and was placed on view at the Exposition Universelle held in the
Palais de l'Industrie in 1855.
Gérôme in his turn made a like attempt, in his _Bellona_, in which,
to remedy the cold immobility of the material, he coloured both
the ivory and the marble and at the same time invoked the aid of
silver, bronze, gold, and enamel. He had associated with him several
experienced collaborators, such as M. Siot-Decauville, who was to cast
the face of Bellona in bronze, Messrs. Moreau-Vauthier and Delacour to
point the ivory, M. Gautruche to attend to the verde-antique and the
electroplating. Lastly, Gallé, and M. Lalique as well, made a number of
trial models for the little head of Medusa.
Among the other examples of Gérôme's sculpture, mention must be made
of _The Entrance of Bonaparte into Cairo_ (1897), _Bonaparte_, a
bust (1897), _Timour-Lang, the Lion Tamer_ (1898), _Frederick the
Great_ (1899), _Washington_ (1901), _The expiring Eagle of Waterloo_,
_The Bowlers_ (1902), _Cupid the Metallurgist_, a statue in bronze,
_Corinth_, a statue in polychrome marble and bronze (1904).