In the same year that Jean-Léon Gérôme painted himself at work on his marble figure of Tanagra in The Artist’s Model, 1895, he revisited two classical myths, telling them in unusual if not unique ways.
Diana and Actaeon (1895) shows the Ovidian myth of Actaeon, the young hunter who stumbles into the goddess Diana when she’s bathing in a pool with her followers. She splashes him with water and transforms him into a stag, which is then torn apart by his own hunting dogs.
A myth that has been painted countless times by many masters of narrative, Gérôme would have been familiar with many previous depictions. What he has painted shows a different story, though: Diana and her court are bathing in a lake, but descending on them from the top of a hillock on the left is a contemporary hunt in close pursuit of a stag, which has just entered the water and is heading rapidly towards the alarmed women.
Perhaps Gérôme intended us to read the stag as being the already-transformed Actaeon, but it’s too far away from Diana, and too early in the action, for such a transformation to have occurred. Maybe he’s experimenting with time and order in narrative.
Painted the following year, his Leda and the Swan is another favourite story from painting, this time not drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but direct from Greek mythology. In order to seduce the beautiful Leda, wife of Tyndareus the King of Sparta, Zeus assumes the form of a swan.
Visual representations have almost always shown Leda embracing the swan, if not in the act of copulation. Gérôme instead shows over twenty young children, some of them winged amorini, bringing the swan to Leda, as she wades into a river. Although consistent with the myth, it’s an unusual treatment, particularly for someone who must have been so familiar with its history in painting.
At this time, Gérôme painted a series of works showing the personification of Truth. First, he showed her nude at the bottom of a well, either lying on the ground, or standing with a mirror in her hand. Those paintings have sadly been lost or remain inaccessible. The version that has survived is probably his last, a painting that was so dear to the artist that he kept it close by in his studio up to the moment of his death.
Truth Coming out of her Well to Shame Mankind (1896) is based on a quotation from Democritus, “Of a truth we know nothing, for truth is in a well” (or, more literally, ‘in an abyss’), but knowing that reference is of little help in understanding these paintings.
Gérôme had given one of his earlier paintings the title of Mendacibus et histrionibus occisa in puteo jacet alma Veritas, which translates as ‘The nurturer Truth lies in a well, having been killed by liars and actors’. In this last version, she has climbed out of the well, and instead of bearing the traditional mirror, she brandishes a whip to scourge us with.
It has often been suggested that this series of works relate to the Dreyfus affair in France, but as they predate Zola’s famous article J’accuse! of 1898, that’s unlikely. I agree with more recent proposals that Gérôme’s Truth is the culmination of his themes of what is seen, visual revelation, and truth, particularly to nature. It is, perhaps, his last word on Impressionism, and his final defence of his life-long painting style.
Gérôme used the same allusion in his preface to Émile Bayard’s posthumous collection of collotype plates of photographs of nudes, Le Nu esthétique. L’Homme, la Femme, L’Enfant. Album de documents artistiques inédits d’après Nature, which was published in 1902:
Photography is an art. It forces artists to discard their old routine and forget their old formulas. It has opened our eyes and forced us to see that which previously we have not seen; a great and inexpressible service for Art. It is thanks to photography that Truth has finally come out of her well. She will never go back.
Around 1895, Gérôme painted a series of eight works in grisaille telling stories from the Bible. One of the few survivors from these is The Disobedient Prophet, relating an obscure story from the first book of Kings (chapter 13) in the Old Testament. This is by no means the only visual account of this story, but is unusual among religious paintings.
Following Jeroboam’s idolatry at Bethel, God commands that no one shall eat bread or drink water there, and must not return by the way that they came. When a prophet disobeys God’s command, he is given to a lion, which kills him and leaves his body on the road, with his donkey unharmed beside him. He is found there, as shown here.
A couple of years later, Gérôme painted the event marking the start of Christ’s Passion, The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem (1897). According to all four gospels, Jesus descended from the Mount of Olives, and as he proceeded towards Jerusalem, crowds laid their clothes on the ground to welcome his triumphal entry into the city.
Aside from being one of the major events in the Passion to be shown in paintings, for Gérôme this may have had another reading. But a few years before, his paintings were being welcomed by throngs at the Salon, and commanded huge sums when sold. A short time later, his work was largely ignored, and he may have seen himself as being prepared for crucifixion in public.
Moses on Mount Sinai (1895-99) shows a well-known episode during the forty years the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, following their exodus from slavery in Egypt. Moses their leader went up to the top of Mount Sinai to be given the ten commandments by God, during which the Israelites fashioned a graven image of a golden calf for their worship.
This is probably Gérôme’s last spectacle of his career: vast in its scope, and equally dramatic in its importance for the Israelites. He may also have been influenced by the writings of the scholar Charles Beke, who in 1873 proposed that what the book of Exodus referred to as Mount Sinai was actually a volcano. Controversy over its real location continues.
Then, in about 1902, Gérôme returned to his series of paintings of himself as a sculptor. His Self-Portrait Painting The Ball Player is a fascinating variation of the traditional form of self-portrait, in that he is here applying the colour to one of his polychromatic sculptures, a figure of a ball player, who closely resembles those seen earlier in his paintings of sculptures, including Pygmalion and Galatea.
His final visit to the martyrdom of Christians in classical Roman times, Removal of the Big Cats from 1902, is now considered to be in execrable taste, but I think is being misread. Unlike some other nineteenth century history painters, Gérôme had showed no tendency to mawkishness, nor predilection for gore.
This painting shows the wild beasts – Gérôme’s favourite ‘big cats’ in particular, which he painted in many of his Orientalist works – being herded back into the bowels of the Colosseum. The remnants of the crowd are making their way out, and the incinerated or dismembered bodies of martyrs are left behind. It is, for all the blood in the sand, the logical conclusion to Gérôme’s series of works showing Roman spectacles, from their earliest beginning with his Cock Fight of 1846. For all those who enjoyed the earlier ‘sport’, it’s also a grim reminder of the eventual outcome.
The last narrative painting securely attributed to Gérôme is a little joke of his that proved to be his greatest influence on twentieth century art: his Optician’s Sign from 1902. This plays on the French words opticien and chien (dog). He apparently entered this in a competition. Years later, it was seized upon by Surrealists, and proved an inspiration for several of them.
Given Gérôme’s career-long fascination with the truth and accuracy of images, this might have been an ideal work with which to end his painting. But there is one more narrative work that may have been painted by those working in his studio, but must have come from Gérôme’s inner vision: Androcles (c 1902).
The story of Androcles (or Androclus) and the Lion was first recorded by Aulus Gellius and attributed to Apion, claimed to be a true account, but has become widespread in European folk tales. It was turned into the successful and still popular play Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw, but that wasn’t published for a decade after this painting.
Androcles was a slave in Rome, with a mean master, so he decided to run away. Hiding in the woods, he became short of food, and weak. One night a lion came into the cave where Androcles was sheltering. The lion was roaring, and scared Androcles, who thought that he was about to be eaten by the beast.
But it was clear that the lion had a very painful foot; eventually Androcles plucked up the courage to look at the animal’s foot, from which he extracted a large thorn (or splinter of wood). The lion was overjoyed and thoroughly amiable towards Androcles. They became firm friends, and the lion brought Androcles food, to build up his strength.
One day soldiers were passing, and found Androcles. They returned him to Rome, where the law prescribed that such runaway slaves were to be put in the arena with a hungry lion, as in Gérôme’s earlier paintings of such scenes. The day came that Androcles was put in the arena, but when his lion was released, he turned out to be the same who Androcles had been so friendly with. Instead of the lion killing Androcles, they showed their friendship. When he explained how this came about, Androcles was made a free man, and took the lion as his pet.
Gérôme shows the salient event in the first part of the story, with Androcles extracting the thorn or splinter from the lion’s paw.
Perhaps Gérôme’s career had a happy ending after all.
Jean-Léon Gérôme was found dead in his Paris studio on 10 January 1904. His reputation collapsed during the twentieth century, with one of his paintings selling for only $500 in 1942, but his work has undergone revival since 2000.
References
Ackerman GM (2000) Jean-Léon Gérôme, Monographie révisée, Catalogue Raisonné Mis à Jour, (in French) ACR Édition. ISBN 978 2 867 70137 5.
Scott Allan and Mary Morton, eds. (2010) Reconsidering Gérôme, Getty. ISBN 978 1 6060 6038 4.
Gülru Çakmak (2017) Jean-Léon Gérôme and the Crisis of History Painting in the 1850s, Liverpool UP. ISBN 978 1 78694 067 4.
de Cars L et al. (2010) The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), Skira. ISBN 978 8 85 720702 5.