The Amazing Adventures of Archibald Esq.
Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Hounds
Jean-Léon Gérôme’s The Negro Master of the Hounds is a truly handsome painting - of hounds and human alike.
Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 – 1904) was a French painter and sculptor who resisted the counter-revolutionary movements of Impressionism, choosing instead to continue to develop and conserve the style of French neo-classicism. He produced many works in a historical, Orientalist style, and is said to have brought the French Empire tradition to an artistic climax.
Today his work is probably remembered most in ‘art cards’ — featuring such iconic images as Pygmalion and Galatea. Perhaps this is because of the ‘orientalism’ of his work. Which really says more about today’s sensitivities than it does about his own time. Woof! And it’s worth recalling that his painting touched on many areas that are ’sore’ or ‘touchy’ today — such as the slave trade, including a striking image of women being auctioned off at a ‘harem market.’
Gérôme developed a taste for oriental travel after visiting Turkey in 1855 to make studies for a large official commission. Soon after, he visited Egypt in preparation for the Salon of 1857. This shift in subject matter and point of view marked the start of his career as an Orientalist or a “peintre ethnographique.”
Most of his works have either been lost or destroyed, except for those collected by the aristocratic de Suduiraut family that his daughter married into. Those works, declared works of national (French) heritage, were donated to the national museums of Paris.
Awoof! Archie
Posted 04 Jun 08
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