Part 2

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."

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.

THE ARTIST'S WORK

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).

Italy also, with all her memories, furnished Gérôme with scenes of striking contrast, evoked from the vanished past, spectacles at once sumptuous and barbaric. He caught this atmosphere with rare felicity. _Paestum_ (1851) commands attention because of its group of buffaloes, which the Goncourts praised for "their ponderous weight of head, the solidity of their huge bulk, the grouping of their attitudes, the shagginess of their coats, the prevailing sense of grateful coolness."

It is necessary to assign a place apart, in this series, for the _Augustan Age, Birth of Christ_ (1855, Amiens Museum). In his own private opinion, confided to his cousin Timbal, Gérôme held that this enormous composition, measuring ten metres in length by seven in height, lacked inventiveness and originality. It is true that the artist's personality is not clearly revealed in this picture, which is a sort of vast commentary on a phrase by Bossuet, and indisputably draws its inspiration from the _Apotheosis of Homer_ by Ingres. Nevertheless, no one can dispute its noble qualities, and to borrow a phrase from Théophile Gautier, its "high philosophic significance." Beside Augustus Caesar deified appears Rome, in the form of a woman, helmeted, armed with a buckler, and clad in a red chlamys; then Tiberius, standing on the right, then statesmen and poets, Caesar, Cleopatra, Anthony, Brutus, and Cassius grouped together; lastly the throng of all nations on their knees, admirably rendered. In the centre, relatively unimportant in this immense assemblage, are the Virgin Mary, the Infant Jesus, and St. Joseph, treated in a curious fashion, modelled on the manner of Giotto. "It is the chief ornament of the Amiens Museum," Gérôme would say jestingly; for he had largely lost respect for this prolonged and important effort which represented two years' work of a serious and diligent student of history.

The two flawless masterpieces of Gérôme, the eloquent interpreter of ancient Rome, are unquestionably his _Ave Caesar, Morituri te Salutant_ (1859), purchased by Mathews, in which, in the presence of a bloated, overfed Vitellius, sitting pacifically in his imperial box, not far from the white Vestals, crowned with verbena, gladiators are fighting and dying in the circus, and _Pollice Verso_ (1874) in which these same gladiators are represented, no longer as Roman soldiers, but in the exact costume that they wear at the moment when the Emperor and the crowd, ravenous for carnage, turn down their thumbs as signal for the death stroke. This work, published by Goupil, did not appear at the Salon. We must cite further _Gaius Maximus_, the _Chariot Race_, which aroused legitimate enthusiasm in America; The _Wild Beasts Entering the Arena_ (1902) and we must not forget that Gérôme also expended his energy as a sculptor upon these same attractive gladiatorial figures.

Striking and pathetic contrast is also earnestly striven for and strongly rendered in _The Death of Caesar_ (1859, 1867). One almost needs to be an incomparable "stage manager" in order to show the body of Caesar after this fashion, in the foreground, in the chamber deserted by the Senators; one Conscript Father, as a touch of satire, has fallen asleep. The effect is powerful, even though it has been sought for with too obvious care. Undoubtedly Nadar had the laugh on his side when he compared the body of Caesar to a bundle of linen and called the picture "The Day of the Washerwoman." Gérôme appreciated the humour of this pleasantry. It is equally true that Baudelaire applauded the picture, exclaiming: "Certainly this time M. Gérôme's imagination has outdone itself; it passed through a fortunate crisis when it conceived of Caesar alone, stretched upon the ground before his overturned throne ... this terrible epitome tells everything."

The clever erudition of the painter, who had already revealed himself as an adherent of the so-called group of "Pompeiians," in the _Gyneceum_ (1850),--in which we perceive a group of nude women in the court of a house in Herculaneum,--asserts itself once more, coupled with an incisive touch of epigram in _Two Augurs Unable to Look at Each Other Without Laughing_, and similarly in the _Cave Canem_, now at Vesoul (in front of a Roman house a slave is playing the role of watch dog), in the _Sale of Slaves at Rome_ (1884), etc.

A similar ingenuity, with greater amplitude, constitutes the charm and the surprise of _Cleopatra and Caesar_ (1886). Cleopatra has had herself brought into Caesar's cabinet in the palace at Alexandria, concealed in a bundle of clothing. "Her appearance there," said Maxime du Camp, who also praised the interest of the accessories, treated with exquisite care, "is perfectly chaste, in spite of her nudity." All the details are executed with a masterly command of picturesqueness and accuracy.

As a religious painter Gérôme has to his credit the _Virgin, Infant Jesus, and St. John_ (1848), a youthful work imitated from Perugino, a _St. George_, in the church of Saint-Georges at Vesoul, a _St. Martin Cutting his Mantle_, in the ancient refectory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, a _Death of St. Jerome_ (1878) at Saint-Séverin, a _Moses on Mt. Sinai_, and _The Plague at Marsailles_, and, most important of all, _Golgotha Consummatum Est_, intensely lugubrious and symbolic in aspect, with Christ and the two thieves appearing, through the desolate atmosphere, like writhing shadows on the cross. This conception cost the author a violent diatribe from Veuillot, while Edmund About, although making certain reservations, wrote on the other side: "The entire sum of qualities that are distinctive of M. Gérôme will be found in this picture."

As a painter of exotic life Gérôme remains an observer of the highest order. If he has not wholly revealed Italy to us in his _Guardians of the Herd_ and his _Pifferari_ (1855, 1857), he has at least done so in the case of Egypt, still deeply impregnated with an ancient and splendid civilization, naïve and at the same time venerable, Egypt before the advent of tourists, a luminous land where the Nile and the Desert reign supreme, a land of magnificence and of savagery. Landscapes of this Egypt of poetic mystery, and of Palestine as well, childish or perverse _almas_, rude Albanian Chiefs, Turbaned Turks,--one never wearies of these decorative effects, these clear visions, these scenes of animation, whether violent or delicate, the people, the vegetation, the fabrics, all resplendent under the marvellous sky of the Orient.

In the company of this intrepid, venturesome and observant traveller, we witness the passage of _Egyptian Recruits Crossing the Desert_, we are present at _Prayers in the House of an Albanian Chief_, we pause in the _Plain of Thebes_, not far from _Memmon and Sesostris_, and we watch the _Camels at the Drinking Trough_, so admirably realized. Gérôme, who had a gift for finding the right and pleasing phrase, gave this rather neat definition of a camel: "The Ship of the Sea of Sand."

Similarly, the _Egyptian Straw-chopper_ (1861, again exhibited in 1867, and purchased by M. Werlé) symbolizes, simply yet forcefully, agricultural Egypt, and all the varied shadings of her pastoral poetry. Then again, there is _The Prisoner_ (1863), in which a boat is making its way along the vast and pacific Nile. Two negro oarsmen, the master, a bashibazouk, are in the prow; and in the stern, beside a buffoon, who apparently derides him, while twanging the strings of a guitar, the prisoner lies cross-wise, fast bound, and abandons himself to his cruel destiny. There, in a setting of enchanted beauty, we have the chief actors in this original drama, in which dream and reality are blended.

What a horde of types, some of them bizarre, others simply comic! There are, taking them as they come, a _Turkish Butcher in Jerusalem_ (1863), _The Alma_ (Professional Singing Girl--1864), _The Slaves in the Market Place_, _The Clothing Merchant at Cairo_, _The Albanians Playing Chess_ (1867), The _Itinerant Merchant at Cairo_ (1869). Then there is the _Promenade of the Harem_, and still others, the _Santon_ (Turkish Monk) _at the Door of the Mosque_ and _Women at the Bath_ (1876), the _Arab and his Courser_ and _The Return from the Hunt_ (1878).

In the company of this experienced and reliable guide, we wander from _Jerusalem_ (1868) to the _Great Bath at Broussa_ (1885), from a _Corner of Cairo_ to _Medinet_ and _Fayoum_. Here we have the severed heads in the _Mosque of El Hecanin_, the nude woman in the _Moorish Bath_, all the barbarity and all the grace of the Orient,--and invariably the anecdote, whether agreeable or sinister, blends with the matchless splendour of the landscape.

To this list must be added _Recreation in Camp, a Souvenir of Moldavia_ (Salon of 1854), in which a soldier is dancing before his assembled comrades, to the sound of drums, fifes, and violins. A sentinel keeps watch. It is a picture taken in the act, and intensely real.

It is easy to detect the historian, or, to adopt the expression of M. Jules Claretie, the "Memoir Maker," possessed of the true gift, agreeable and individual, lurking behind every one of the works of this authoritative orientalist. He dedicated himself quite naturally and with great success to the interpretation of history and of the historic and literary anecdote.

His love of contrasts, his gift for depicting locality and somehow conveying the very atmosphere belonging to the varied scenes that are to be brought before the spectator's eye, give amplitude to such attractive little compositions as _Louis XIV. and Molière_ (1863), and _A Collaboration_ (1874); evoke the whole sombre tragedy of the death of Maréchal Ney, _December 7, 1815, Nine o'clock in the Morning_ (1868); and appeal successively to our curiosity, our sympathy, or our admiration, with a Frederick II., conqueror of Silesia, playing on his flute, the _King Flutist_ (1874, purchased by M. H. Oppenheim), _His Gray Eminence_ (1874), in which the austere and dominant Father Joseph is making his way alone, down the stairway, in the presence of the obsequious courtiers; a Bonaparte day-dreaming before the Sphinx, _Oedipus_ (1886), a _Bonaparte at Cairo_ gazing at the town from the back of his Arab horse, a _Bonaparte in Egypt_, mounted on a white dromedary, dreaming of his omnipotence, of his conquest of the universe, and surrounded by his overdriven soldiers.

As a matter of fact, Gérôme made a sort of hero-worship of Napoleon and the Napoleonic epic, resembling in this respect his friend, M. Frédéric Masson, the celebrated historian of the Emperor, who was better qualified than any other writer to pay an eloquent tribute to this _Bonaparte in Egypt_.

"Bonaparte is no longer on the road to Syria, he is on the road to India; he is hesitating between the two halves of the world that he holds in his hands; he is weighing the destiny of Alexander against the destiny of Cæsar; he is asking himself whether Asia, to which he holds the key, is a fair exchange for Europe which he has just quitted; and while his dream embraces the universe, he leaves his human rubbish heap to suffer."

Gérôme is wholly himself when he has an anecdote to give us, whether it be subtle, humorous, kindly, or dramatic, and even,--why not use the word?--melodramatic.

Classified thus, _The Duel after the Masquerade_ fully deserves its brilliant reputation. Reproduced, not only in lithographs and engravings, but even transferred to the theatre (given at the Gymnase, in 1881, by Mme. Fould), its subject has become a matter of general knowledge. It is winter in the Bois de Boulogne. A number of people in fancy costume are bending over a wounded Pierrot, while one of the witnesses of this improvised duel is leading away the murderer, the Harlequin.

One can see at once what a tremendous appeal a subject like this would have for the general public.

This singular drama, taking place in the snow, all this joyousness ending in bloodshed and perhaps death, is so fantastic that it leaves a lasting impression. It was, by the way, as M. Guillaumin has explained, suggested by an actual duel that took place between Deluns-Montaud, the Harlequin, and the Prefect of Police Bortelle, the Pierrot.

Undoubtedly there was, and still is, ground for criticism. Alexandre Dumas thought, not unreasonably, that serious-minded men of that age would not go out to fight each other in such a costume. Edmond About criticized the pose of Crispin supporting on his knee an entire group of spectators, along with the body of poor Pierrot. But Paul de Saint-Victor praised the "truthfulness of the postures, the etching-like precision of the heads, the wise planning of the whole composition."

In order to appreciate better the daring fantasy and the wise and invariably picturesque inventiveness of Gérôme, we have only to study further such works as the Frieze destined to be reproduced upon a vase commemorative of the Exposition of London (1853), _Rembrandt Etching_ (exhibited in 1867, purchased by M. E. Fould), which has been admired for its golden half-shadows and freely compared to Gerard Dow, the _Reception of the Siamese Ambassadors_ (1865), _The First Kiss of the Sun_ (1886), the _Poet_, _Thirst_ (1888), and fantasies, such as, _The Amateur of Tulips_, _Whoever you are, here is your Master_; anecdotal portraits throwing side lights on history, such as: _They are Conspiring_, or _Not Convenient_, _Louis XI. visiting Cardinal Balue_, _Promenade of the Court in the Gardens of Versailles_ (1896); animals full of life and prowess, such as: _The Lioness meeting a Jaguar_ and _Ego nominor Leo_, a lion rendered life size; lastly, his studio interiors, in which he has chosen to depict himself exactly as he was, that is to say, a sincere, clear-sighted, and indefatigable workman.