Study for 'In the Harem'

1864–1904

The studio everyone wanted to join

Places in Gérôme’s atelier were limited and keenly sought: only the best students were admitted. Students progressed from drawing after antique works and casts to drawing from the live model and only then were allowed to paint in oils; he attended every Wednesday and Saturday and was known as a severe critic, but helped his students outside the school too, inviting them to his own studio and recommending them to the Salon.

1864–1904

The most “riotous” studio of the École

According to John Milner, who studied with Gérôme, his atelier was the most “riotous” and “lewd” of all the studios at the École: newcomers were put through bizarre initiation rites — slashing each other’s canvases, being thrown down stairs, out of windows and onto upturned stools, and fencing on the model’s dais, nude and with paintbrushes loaded with paint.

1870s

Rising popularity in the United States

In the 1870s Gérôme’s works were particularly sought after by wealthy Americans: over his career he sold American patrons 144 paintings, nearly a quarter of his output; among his American students was Thomas Eakins.

1874

A gold medal of the Salon that he turned down

The 1874 Salon jury unanimously awarded Gérôme a gold medal, which outraged Parisian critics: genre painters, they said, should not be given medals. The artist, then in Holland (he spent the whole of 1874 in the Netherlands studying Frans Hals), telegraphed that he refused the award, but the jury stood on principle too and would not accept the refusal, so the medal had to be handed over to the École des Beaux-Arts.

1875

Walks his colleagues out of Corot’s funeral

At Camille Corot’s funeral the priest began a sermon on the “immoral life of artists”, whereupon Gérôme led all the colleagues present out of the church. He sat on committees helping infirm artists and their widows and always attended his colleagues’ funerals.

c. 1875

Small genre pictures and “harem” scenes

After the fall of the Empire history painting lost value, and after 1875 Gérôme switched mainly to small genre compositions — terse and needing no explanation. This was also when the series of “harem” pictures with nudes appeared (“The Slave Sale”, “Odalisque”, “The Moorish Bath”); from the 1870s he also painted genuine women of the East, especially almehs, Egyptian dancers, giving one of them a cigarette to underline the Europeanisation of Egypt.