Jean-Léon Gérôme

Goupil & Cie.
Wallis & Co. (acquired from the above, 1869, as Marchand d’habits, Old Clothes Merchant no. 3936)
Warden (1869, acquired for Alexander Turney Stewart, New York)
Henry C. Gibson, Philadelphia (before 1880)
David C. Lyall, Brooklyn (and sold, his sale, American Art Association, February 10, 1903, lot 89, illustrated, as A Strolling Merchant)
Julius Oehme, New York (acquired at the above sale per Ackerman, 2000, and as suggested by an old label on the frame; D. Guggenheim according to the American Art Annual of 1903)

Paris, Salon, 1869, no. 1026

L’illustration: Journal Universel: Orné de gravures, vol. LIII, 1869, Paris,  p. 342, illustrated p. 340 (as engraving)
Théophile Gautier, Le Salon de 1869
The Tablet, “Fine Arts in France: Notes on the Paintings, &c., &c., in the Palais des Champs Elysees,” July, 24, 1869, p. 9
Louis Viardot, et al., The Masterpieces of French Art Illustrated: being a biographical history of art in France, from the earliest period to and including the Salon of 1882, Philadelphia, 1883, vol. II,  p. 6
Edward Strahan, ed., The Art Treasures of America, Philadelphia, 1879, vol. I, pp. 77-8, 90, illustrated p. 76; in the 1977 facsimile edition, vol. I, pp. 78-9, 80, illustrated p. 76 (as engraving, as The Old-Clothes Dealer, Cairo)
Charles Henry Hart, The American Art Review, 1.7 (May 1880), “The Public and Private Collections of the United States.  II.  The Collection of Mr. Henry C. Gibson, Philadelphia,” p. 296, illustrated p. 297 (as engraving, as The Old Clothes Dealer, Cairo)
Gerald M. Ackerman, The Life and Work of Jean-Léon Gérôme, with a catalogue raisonne, London, 1986, illustrated p. 80, p. 226, no. 190, illustrated p. 226 (recorded as lost)
Gerald M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme, monographie révisée, catalogue raisonné mis à jour, Paris, 2000, p. 272, no. 190, illustrated p. 273 (with incorrect provenance and present location)

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting was probably originally 4 inches shorter than it is today. It seems that the artist himself added a strip of canvas across the top in order to enlarge the composition; this original join is slightly visible. The paint layer is clean and stable. Under ultraviolet light, one can see a slight residue of a milky varnish. There is some restoration in the lower left portion of the figure's yellow robe, and a number of small finely placed retouches in the upper left quadrant that are not easily visible under ultraviolet light. The condition of the figures on the right side of the picture, the street below the figures and the animals is terrific. This picture is in beautiful state and should be hung in its current condition.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

In 1869, Jean-Léon Gérôme exhibited two Orientalist works at the annual Paris Salon to great critical acclaim. The first of these was a harem scene (Excursion [Promenade] of the Harem, Chrysler Museum of Art) – a genre for which the artist was fast becoming renowned – and the second, the present work, was a nearly photographic representation of Egyptian daily life.  Gérôme had only recently returned from a twelve-week tour of the Middle East, during which time he had visited Cairo and other locales in Egypt.  There, in the winding streets and amidst the colorful bazaars, he added to the collections of textiles, weaponry, and other decorative handicrafts and architectural elements that he had begun to assemble a decade earlier.  (Gérôme’s first trip to Egypt had been in 1856 and he would return to that country seven times during the course of his long and prolific career.)  In addition to these souvenirs of travel, Gérôme created a virtual library of ethnographic figure studies and architectural sketches that would repeatedly find their way into the compositions he created in his renowned Paris studio months and even years later.

Marchand ambulant au Caire features many of Gérôme’s favorite possessions, as well as a subject that would prove to be one of the artist’s most profitable and commerical.  Indeed, immediately upon its exhibition at the Salon, the prestigious art dealership Goupil & Cie. purchased the work in order to engrave and reproduce it in a vast array of formats and mediums, and at varying prices.  (These included: “Photographic Gallery,” “Carte de visite,” “Goupil Museum,” and as a photogravure in the firm’s own publication, produced from 1878 until after 1909, Selected Works by J.-L. Gérôme, pl. 49.)  The painting itself was no less lucrative for Goupil – repurchased and resold in a whirlwind of international transactions, its price escalated with each new sale, often in as little as a few weeks’ time.  

Early owners of Gérôme’s work were predominantly American manufacturers and industrialists, with a penchant for fine art.  (The enthusiasm of Alexander Turney Stewart, in fact, a New York dry goods merchant, may be credited with forever cementing the name of Gérôme in America: at least five works by the artist were exhibited in the massive skylit picture gallery built at his West 34^th Street home.)  The large collections of these prominent society figures often featured paintings that reflected – at times ironically – their own values, aspirations, and lives.  Their exacting work ethic and a love of high gloss and slick detail directed them toward the archaeological reconstructions and ethnographic compositions of the classically-trained Academic painter Gérôme, while the artist’s scenes of Middle Eastern bazaars and merchants held an unexpected sense of familiarity – here was the marketplace, the pursuit of profit, the bargaining crowd, and the working man.  (Gérôme’s harem scenes of course held a different sort of appeal – as a two-dimensional outlet for Gilded Age fantasies, they offered a safe exploration of male desires.)

Critical praise for Marchand ambulant au Caire, both in America and abroad, was fervent as well.  The great critic Théophile Gautier, upon seeing the work at the Paris Salon, wrote the following accolade: “Le Marchand ambulant au Caire, tout en vendant son bric-à-brac oriental, conserve une rare majesté; on en ferait aisément un patriarche, Abraham ou Jacob, dans un tableau biblique.”  Edward Strahan echoed these sentiments years later, in his widely acclaimed account of The Art Treasures of America:

. . . finished, minute, inexorably perfect, a photograph with the addition of color.  You can almost hear the monotonous cry that proceeds from the fellow’s jaws, set in a mechanical state of expansion, like a machine kept open with a spring and a peg.  Our western collectors of bric-à-brac will fall in love with the adorable gun, the celestial silk gown, and the seductive Saracen helmet with chain cape, exposed by this purveyor in the vulgar lanes of Cairo, seemingly with no sense of their virtuosité; the artist will more greatly admire the statuesque solidity of the figure, the vibrating walk, with head doddering from side to side, the solid bronze mask of the face . . . he is all there, every atom of him . . . (pp. 77-8)

Subtle references to others of the artist’s most profitable series, and to Egypt’s transition from past to present, were also included in this composition, to the delight of astute observers: the musket, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, is here but an ornament and a means to a sale, emphasizing the new impotence of both the Bashi-Bazouk, or Mamluk guard, and the once fearsome Arnaut soldier in modern Cairo.  Gérôme repeatedly depicted these figures in his art, at times with dignity, but more often with sarcasm and wit.  (Interestingly, in the Bashi-Bazouk (fig. 1) [The Metropolitan Museum of Art], also painted in 1869, the soldier wears the same distinctive pink satin as featured in the present work, and exhibits the same meticulous attention to texture and light.)  Similarly, the Mamluk (or possibly Persian) helmet with its elaborate metal chasing and formidable spike is comparable to that nonchalantly held by the striking Pelt Merchant of Cairo (Private Collection), another of Gérôme’s “merchant series” painted in 1869.  (The Brooklyn Museum’s The Carpet Merchant of Cairo, fig. 2, with a similar, albeit reversed, composition to Marchand ambulant au Caire and again dating from 1869, may also be included in this group.)  Finally, the long vista through a crowded street, the mashrabiyya balconies and overhanging eaves of recently whitewashed buildings, with one of Cairo’s characteristic minarets and a dome in the distance, silhouetted against a blue sky, align Gérôme’s work with the deeply meditative prayer scenes that collectors and critics would hail throughout the 1860s, ‘70’s, and beyond.  Criss-crossing these painted surfaces, such details create intriguing dialogues between works and among series, and emphasize Gérôme’s inimitable, and deeply personal, Orientalist style.

This catalogue note was written by Dr. Emily M. Weeks.