11 maggio 1824
Born
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.
1847
The 1847 Salon: “The Cockfight” and Gautier’s review
Having finished his first large painting at the end of 1846, Gérôme confessed to Delaroche that it seemed to him “weak and flat”; his teacher advised sending it to the Salon all the same. The canvas was hung high up, yet critics noticed it, Théophile Gautier among them, and “The Cockfight” won a third-class medal: 1847 proved decisive for his career.
1850
The scandal over “Greek Interior”
The sketch “Greek Interior” — in essence a picture of a brothel — caused the biggest scandal at the Salon of 1850, with critics demanding that the police not allow such indecency. At the height of the row the picture was bought by President Louis Napoleon (by other accounts, by Prince Napoléon Joseph Bonaparte), a great honour for the young artist.