It is difficult to enumerate in detail all the works of GÉrÔme, whose originality and energy were inexhaustible. Only a short time before his death he declared that with the help of the sketches contained in his cupboards he had material enough to keep him busy for twenty-five years longer.

Instead of attempting to draw up a chronological list of his paintings, which would be only approximately correct, even if limited to the more important, it is more profitable to study this conscientious artist under his principal aspects.Although he made some talented attempts, GÉrÔme neither was nor wished to be a portrait painter, any more than a painter of modern life. He had, however, as has been pointed out, all the necessary qualities for this type which demands so much precision and assurance. In The Emperor Napoleon III Receiving the Siamese Ambassadors at the Palace of Fontainebleau, now in the museum at Versailles, there are eighty portraits. The artist has represented himself, side by side with Meissonier, and the story is told that a certain general accorded him a sitting of only ten minutes.

Besides the large and somewhat sombre portrait of Rachel, which adorns the Stairway of Artists at the ComÉdie-FranÇaise, and which was painted from existing likenesses and from memory, there is scarcely anything else to cite than the portrait of his brother while a student in the Polytechnic School, a Head of a Woman (1853, at the museum of Nantes), those of M. Leblond, at Vesoul, mentioned by M. Guillaumin, of M. A. T. (1864), of ClÉry, the great lawyer, and of Charles Garnier, the celebrated architect of the OpÉra.

As a sculptor, GÉrÔme has left some admirable busts, among others those of Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, bequeathed to the National Museum, of General Cambriels, of Henri Lavoix, the Monument of Paul Baudry destined for La Roche-sur-Yon, and, most important of all, the Equestrian Statue of the Duc d'Aumale, which is now to be seen at Chantilly, and the model for which is at the museum of BesanÇon.

GÉrÔme had a sincere and profound love for antiquity; with him it was not the enjoyment of a contemplative mind, a tranquil amateur art, but that of an historian, an archaeologist coupled with the instinct of a dramatist, a psychologue, let us say, who is eager to discover, in any scene whatever, in the graceful or violent gestures of such and such personages of bygone days, some general application. He was certainly most anxious to suggest interesting or amusing parallels to modern life, for, in spite of the dissimilarity of the settings, the tinsels, the decorations, over which the artist laboured with an almost devout care of minute detail, human nature to-day is always more or less close to the human nature of Greece or Rome.

"Exhibit that picture, it will bring you honour," said Paul Delaroche to his pupil, who had shown him, with much misgiving, the Young Greeks Occupied in Cock Fighting. "It shows originality and style." And that was his first success (1847). The grace of the young figures won much admiration. Planche praised the harmony of the composition as a whole. As to ThÉophile Gautier, he showed himself, as we have already said, highly enthusiastic; he declared that the features of the boy were drawn with extreme subtlety. "As to the cocks," he added, "they are true prodigies of drawing, animation, and colour; neither Snyders, nor Woenic, nor Oudry, nor Desportes, nor Rousseau, nor any of the known animal painters have attained, after twenty years of labour, the perfection which M. GÉrÔme has reached at the first attempt." Let us note immediately that GÉrÔme was, as a matter of fact, a very great painter of animals. His dogs, his horses, and his lions are the work of a masterly observer.

Closely following upon the Cock Fight, we must recall Anacreon with Bacchus and Cupid (1848, Toulouse Museum) which GÉrÔme himself characterized as a "lifeless picture," and which nevertheless earned him a second class medal. Later on he was destined to treat this same subject in marble (Salon of 1881). The polished and somewhat affected grace of Anacreon must have especially pleased the painter, because in 1889 he produced a whole series of compositions of delicious daintiness, entitled Cupid Tipsy. On the same order of ideas, mention must be made of Bacchus and Cupid Intoxicated (1850, Bordeaux Museum), and in addition to these, under the head of what may be called his Hellenic canvases,—in which he succeeded in conjuring up with magic skill the splendours and graces of that immortal mother of letters and arts, Greece beloved by the gods,—the following pictures, The Idyll (1853), full of charm and solid erudition; The Greek Interior (1856), of sure and penetrating art; King Candaules (1859), in which the sumptuous beauty of Nyssia illumines the bed-chamber of a Heraclid, 700 years B.C., and in which the interest of the picturesque anecdote is enhanced by the artist's marvellous documentary knowledge.

In the same group must be mentioned Phryne before the Tribunal (1861, reËxhibited in 1867), of charming subtlety, but with a little too much emphasis, perhaps, on the irony of its psychology; and, of course, Socrates Seeking Alcibiades at the House of Aspasia, analogous in inspiration, and, as it happens, belonging to the same year; and lastly Daphnis and Chloe (1898).

Italy also, with all her memories, furnished GÉrÔme with scenes of striking contrast, evoked from the vanished past, spectacles at once sumptuous and barbaric. He caught this atmosphere with rare felicity. Paestum (1851) commands attention because of its group of buffaloes, which the Goncourts praised for "their ponderous weight of head, the solidity of their huge bulk, the grouping of their attitudes, the shagginess of their coats, the prevailing sense of grateful coolness."

It is necessary to assign a place apart, in this series, for the Augustan Age, Birth of Christ (1855, Amiens Museum). In his own private opinion, confided to his cousin Timbal, GÉrÔme held that this enormous composition, measuring ten metres in length by seven in height, lacked inventiveness and originality. It is true that the artist's personality is not clearly revealed in this picture, which is a sort of vast commentary on a phrase by Bossuet, and indisputably draws its inspiration from the Apotheosis of Homer by Ingres. Nevertheless, no one can dispute its noble qualities, and to borrow a phrase from ThÉophile Gautier, its "high philosophic significance." Beside Augustus Caesar deified appears Rome, in the form of a woman, helmeted, armed with a buckler, and clad in a red chlamys; then Tiberius, standing on the right, then statesmen and poets, Caesar, Cleopatra, Anthony, Brutus, and Cassius grouped together; lastly the throng of all nations on their knees, admirably rendered. In the centre, relatively unimportant in this immense assemblage, are the Virgin Mary, the Infant Jesus, and St. Joseph, treated in a curious fashion, modelled on the manner of Giotto. "It is the chief ornament of the Amiens Museum," GÉrÔme would say jestingly; for he had largely lost respect for this prolonged and important effort which represented two years' work of a serious and diligent student of history.

The two flawless masterpieces of GÉrÔme, the eloquent interpreter of ancient Rome, are unquestionably his Ave Caesar, Morituri te Salutant (1859), purchased by Mathews, in which, in the presence of a bloated, overfed Vitellius, sitting pacifically in his imperial box, not far from the white Vestals, crowned with verbena, gladiators are fighting and dying in the circus, and Pollice Verso (1874) in which these same gladiators are represented, no longer as Roman soldiers, but in the exact costume that they wear at the moment when the Emperor and the crowd, ravenous for carnage, turn down their thumbs as signal for the death stroke. This work, published by Goupil, did not appear at the Salon. We must cite further Gaius Maximus, the Chariot Race, which aroused legitimate enthusiasm in America; The Wild Beasts Entering the Arena (1902) and we must not forget that GÉrÔme also expended his energy as a sculptor upon these same attractive gladiatorial figures.

Striking and pathetic contrast is also earnestly striven for and strongly rendered in The Death of Caesar (1859, 1867). One almost needs to be an incomparable "stage manager" in order to show the body of Caesar after this fashion, in the foreground, in the chamber deserted by the Senators; one Conscript Father, as a touch of satire, has fallen asleep. The effect is powerful, even though it has been sought for with too obvious care. Undoubtedly Nadar had the laugh on his side when he compared the body of Caesar to a bundle of linen and called the picture "The Day of the Washerwoman." GÉrÔme appreciated the humour of this pleasantry. It is equally true that Baudelaire applauded the picture, exclaiming: "Certainly this time M. GÉrÔme's imagination has outdone itself; it passed through a fortunate crisis when it conceived of Caesar alone, stretched upon the ground before his overturned throne … this terrible epitome tells everything."

The clever erudition of the painter, who had already revealed himself as an adherent of the so-called group of "Pompeiians," in the Gyneceum (1850),—in which we perceive a group of nude women in the court of a house in Herculaneum,—asserts itself once more, coupled with an incisive touch of epigram in Two Augurs Unable to Look at Each Other Without Laughing, and similarly in the Cave Canem, now at Vesoul (in front of a Roman house a slave is playing the role of watch dog), in the Sale of Slaves at Rome (1884), etc.

A similar ingenuity, with greater amplitude, constitutes the charm and the surprise of Cleopatra and Caesar (1886). Cleopatra has had herself brought into Caesar's cabinet in the palace at Alexandria, concealed in a bundle of clothing. "Her appearance there," said Maxime du Camp, who also praised the interest of the accessories, treated with exquisite care, "is perfectly chaste, in spite of her nudity." All the details are executed with a masterly command of picturesqueness and accuracy.

As a religious painter GÉrÔme has to his credit the Virgin, Infant Jesus, and St. John (1848), a youthful work imitated from Perugino, a St. George, in the church of Saint-Georges at Vesoul, a St. Martin Cutting his Mantle, in the ancient refectory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, a Death of St. Jerome (1878) at Saint-SÉverin, a Moses on Mt. Sinai, and The Plague at Marsailles, and, most important of all, Golgotha Consummatum Est, intensely lugubrious and symbolic in aspect, with Christ and the two thieves appearing, through the desolate atmosphere, like writhing shadows on the cross. This conception cost the author a violent diatribe from Veuillot, while Edmund About, although making certain reservations, wrote on the other side: "The entire sum of qualities that are distinctive of M. GÉrÔme will be found in this picture."

As a painter of exotic life GÉrÔme remains an observer of the highest order. If he has not wholly revealed Italy to us in his Guardians of the Herd and his Pifferari (1855, 1857), he has at least done so in the case of Egypt, still deeply impregnated with an ancient and splendid civilization, naÏve and at the same time venerable, Egypt before the advent of tourists, a luminous land where the Nile and the Desert reign supreme, a land of magnificence and of savagery. Landscapes of this Egypt of poetic mystery, and of Palestine as well, childish or perverse almas, rude Albanian Chiefs, Turbaned Turks,—one never wearies of these decorative effects, these clear visions, these scenes of animation, whether violent or delicate, the people, the vegetation, the fabrics, all resplendent under the marvellous sky of the Orient.

In the company of this intrepid, venturesome and observant traveller, we witness the passage of Egyptian Recruits Crossing the Desert, we are present at Prayers in the House of an Albanian Chief, we pause in the Plain of Thebes, not far from Memmon and Sesostris, and we watch the Camels at the Drinking Trough, so admirably realized. GÉrÔme, who had a gift for finding the right and pleasing phrase, gave this rather neat definition of a camel: "The Ship of the Sea of Sand."

Similarly, the Egyptian Straw-chopper (1861, again exhibited in 1867, and purchased by M. WerlÉ) symbolizes, simply yet forcefully, agricultural Egypt, and all the varied shadings of her pastoral poetry. Then again, there is The Prisoner (1863), in which a boat is making its way along the vast and pacific Nile. Two negro oarsmen, the master, a bashibazouk, are in the prow; and in the stern, beside a buffoon, who apparently derides him, while twanging the strings of a guitar, the prisoner lies cross-wise, fast bound, and abandons himself to his cruel destiny. There, in a setting of enchanted beauty, we have the chief actors in this original drama, in which dream and reality are blended.

What a horde of types, some of them bizarre, others simply comic! There are, taking them as they come, a Turkish Butcher in Jerusalem (1863), The Alma (Professional Singing Girl—1864), The Slaves in the Market Place, The Clothing Merchant at Cairo, The Albanians Playing Chess (1867), The Itinerant Merchant at Cairo (1869). Then there is the Promenade of the Harem, and still others, the Santon (Turkish Monk) at the Door of the Mosque and Women at the Bath (1876), the Arab and his Courser and The Return from the Hunt (1878).

PIERRE LAFITTE & CIE, PARIS