Le Forum, la nuit

1840–1841

His father gives him a year to succeed: off to Paris

A successful copy of a painting by Decamps caught the eye of Paul Delaroche, who spoke highly of the young man’s talent; this helped persuade his father to let him go to Paris (sources give 1840 or 1841) with a letter of recommendation from Cariage. His father, who kept repeating that artists, unlike jewellers, are poor, gave him a year to make good and later, after visiting him, approved of his studies and began sending him 1,000 francs a year.

1843–1844

A year in Italy with Delaroche

In 1843 Delaroche took his pupil with him on a year-long trip to Italy — Rome, Florence, the Vatican, Pompeii. In Naples Gérôme was gripped by gladiators’ armour found at Pompeii, which, in his words, “opened an enormous horizon” for him; in his autobiography he later called that year one of the best of his life.

1844

Typhus in Rome: his mother saves him

In 1844 an epidemic of typhus broke out in Rome and did not spare Gérôme; according to contemporaries, had his mother not come specially from Vesoul to look after him, he would hardly have survived.

1844

Three months in Gleyre’s studio

When Delaroche closed his studio, his students passed to the Swiss painter Charles Gleyre; Gérôme later claimed he had studied with him for only three months, yet from Gleyre he took an interest in genre scenes in an ancient setting and in the Near East. Their relationship did not work out: the circle of “Neo-Grecs” that formed in the studio irritated Gleyre himself.