Jean-Léon Gérôme, attributed
(Vesoul 1824 - 1904 Paris)
View of an Oasis, probably Al Fayyum, Egypt
1867/68
Oil on canvas
19 x 37 cm
SOLD
Remnants of a label on the stretcher...Salon Bibliotheque
Provenance:
Private collection, France
Jean-Léon Gérôme is probably the best-known French nineteenth-century Orientalist. His travels included some twelve visits to the Middle and Far East. Gérôme followed the route of the classical Grand Tour for visitors to the Orient - along the Nile to Cairo, to the Oasis Al Fayyum and Abu Simbel, then back to Cairo, across the Sinai Peninsula and Wadi el Araba to the Holy Land, Jerusalem and, finally, Damascus.
This journey was a considerable undertaking and involved large numbers of camels and horses and a number of bearers led by an interpreter. Friends usually joined the party to defray the costs, so in the winter of 1867-68 Gérôme was accompanied by seven and sometimes eight companions, six of them artists, one of them a photographer and another a writer. Some of them, recording their travel experiences in diaries, letters or in travel journals published later, describe how tirelessly Gérôme seized every opportunity to make quick sketches. In an autobiographical essay of 1878 Gérôme notes how important he found these sketches drawn from nature: Quoique fatigué après de longes marches en plein soleil, je me mettais avec ardeur au travail dès que l'endroit de la halte était atteint. Mais, hélas! Que de choses laissées derrière soi dont on n'emporte que le souvenir! Et j'aime mieux trois touches de couleur sur un morceau de toile que le plus vif des souvenirs; mais il faut en aller en avant avec des regrets.[1]
Gérôme used his sketches from nature as background motifs for finished paintings. The spontaneous naturalism of the sketches, showing his vibrant handling of tonal values and colouristic perception, contrasts sharply with his precisely articulated imagery in his highly polished Salon paintings.
The Musée Garret in Vesoul (Haute Saône) possesses related oil sketches by Gérôme completed on his journey through Egypt, Palestine and Syria in 1868. One depicts the fortified town of Senoures with a bridge and water in the foreground.[2]
[1]Gérôme, Notes, 'J.L. Gérôme à la montée de sa carrière, fait la balance', in: Bulletin de la société d'agriculture, lettres, sciences et arts du Haute Saone, 1980, p.1-30 ('Even when exhausted after long marches in the burning sun, as soon as we reached camp I set to work with ardour. But alas! How many things does one leave behind of which only the memory can be carried away! And I prefer three touches of colour on a patch of canvas to the most vivid of memories; but the march must go on and there will always be regrets.').
[2]Exhib. cat. The Spectacular Art of Jean-Leon Gérôme (1824-1904), Getty Museum Los Angeles 2010, p.236, ill. 137, 139.