Jean-Léon Gérôme

Boussod-Valadon et Cie (acquired from the artist in 1895)
Gould, New York (acquired from the above)
Sale: Sotheby's Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, November 24, 1939, lot 30
Gimbel Brothers, New York, by 1945
Sale: Hanzel Galleries, Chicago, October 29-31, 1995, lot 26, illustrated
Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 21-22, 1996, lot 291

Gérôme first traveled to Egypt in 1856, sailing for four months on the Nile before living in a Cairo house loaned to him by Soliman Pacha.  Though the vogue of Egyptomania was sweeping Europe at the time, Gérôme's early visits to the ancient sites were in advance of the tourist throngs, and he was privileged to see them in a relatively unspoiled state.  Throughout his excursions, the artist made countless drawings of the landscape, monuments, and people of the region—often stopping mid-step to sketch a particularly arresting detail. Many of these sketches in addition to oil studies would refresh his memory of form and color while working in his Parisian studio.  Elements of his drawings were certainly reimagined and recreated in his The Pyramids at Daybreak, thought to have been completed in 1895, fifteen years after his last trip to Egypt, and similar to his earlier The First Kiss of the Sun, exhibited at the Salon of 1886 (Ackerman, p. 316, no. 345, illustrated).  However, in The Pyramids at Daybreak, Gérôme has heightened the visual impact of the plateau to include nomadic settlements of tents, camels, and campfires, along with a village and large lake ---the result of the seasonal flooding of the plain which transformed the desert sands into a reflective mirror.  The pale blues of the water meld with the rosy pinks of the reflected pyramids, while a thin brushing of white over the sky creates a hazy tonality, replicating the atmospheric effects of the early morning sun warming the night-cooled sands. While the highly detailed composition is certainly a result of Gérôme's careful observations made decades earlier, the sensual, mystical power of the scene would seem to come from the artist's own profound sense of nostalgia.