Jean-Léon Gérôme

Oeuvres de J.-L. Gérôme, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, XXXV, 9
Gerald M. Ackerman, The Life and Work of Jean-Léon Gérôme with a catalogue raisonné, London, 1986, no. 51, p.194 (as Three Angels), illustrated opp p. 194 (with variations)
Gerald M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Monographie révisée, catalogue raisonné mis à jour, Paris, 2000, p. 226, no. 51 (as Plafond d'enfants), illustrated p. 227 (with variations)

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This large circular work on canvas has been lined, retouched and varnished fairly recently. The lining is stabilizing the paint layer, and although the cracking is slightly raised, it is not disturbing. The varnish to the picture is slightly uneven and could be addressed. The paint layer is clean. The figures are slightly abraded. Retouches have been added to each figure, but hardly at all to the figure on the left who is in the best condition of the three. The other figures show well applied retouches in a few places. The central figure has a scratch or perhaps even a tear in his face. The figure on the right has a fairly significant restoration in the left side of his chest, in his legs and arms and in the shadowed side of this waist. There is probably a level of abrasion in the background that is still visible and unrestored. There are retouches here and there throughout the remainder of the picture which address thinness, small isolated losses and the rare structural damage. If the varnish were evened out, the work should be hung as is.
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The exact origin and history of Gérôme’s Allegory of Night remain unknown. First documented in Gerald M. Ackerman’s catalogue raisonné of the artist, the present work is titled Three Angels and considered lost with no dimensions given and known only through a photograph. Ackerman speculates that it is a ceiling decoration and relates to A Soul (1853, no. 51, Ackerman, p. 195), which was installed above an altar piece at L’Eglise de Frotey-les-Vesoul, in Haute-Saône, and depicts a soul being carried to heaven by an angel.

While the stylistic connection of the present work to A Soul is apparent, other paintings of allegorical subjects also lend themselves to ready comparison. Night (circa 1850-55, Musée d’Orsay, fig. 1), features a torch bearing figure soaring through a star-blazoned sky at dusk, her midnight blue cloak fluttering around her and arm raised to drop brilliant red poppies to cast the spell of sleep on those below, a subject so clearly connected to Allegory of Night. The Musée d'Orsay suggests that this work was possibly exhibited as Phoebe in Vesoul in 1897, and that it once hung on the bedroom ceiling of the actor Jules François Got, who was a friend to Gérôme and his travelling companion to Turkey in 1853. Also in Got’s home was a series of four panels depicting the seasons by different artists (Gérôme painted Summer, 1850, Cleveland Museum of Art) and the theme of Night was perhaps a compliment to the decor.

The recent re-discovery of Allegory of Night reveals that it is dated 1859, six years after the commission for L’Eglise de Frotey-les-Vesoul, opening up new possibilities and connections to projects painted during an extremely productive period for Gérôme. In an 1858 article for L’Artiste, Theophile Gautier recounts a visit to Gérôme’s studio and describes, in great detail, a number of panels to decorate the railway carriage of Pope Pius IV – certainly a unique commission that married the spirit of progress and modernity with the religious spirit of antiquity (Ackerman, nos. 87-107, pp. 202-5). One of the panels made for the ceiling of the rail car, God the Father supported by Putti (fig. 2), relates stylistically to the present work. He also lists a number of paintings in various states of completion seen in Gérôme’s studio at that time, including Dead Caesar (1859, location unknown), Ave Caesar Morituri to salutant (1859, Yale University), King Candules (1859, Museo de Arte, Ponce), the first sketch for Phyrné and, finally, he briefly describes an important commission of works to decorate a sumptuous new palace at 18 Avenue Montaigne. Built for Prince Napoléon and designed by the architect Alfred Normand, who had just returned from five years in Rome, the home was dubbed the Maison Pompéienne and featured a grand library, Turkish-style bath, portico, glass skylights, a collection of Egyptian artifacts and paintings commissioned from Jean-Léon Gérôme and other artists, inspired by antiquity and the Iliad. Gautier describes three panels in detail, but Ackerman lists another work from the home as “two allegorical figures” (Ackerman, 2000, no. 86.5) – one could speculate that Allegory of Night was an element of the Maison Pompéienne commission, perhaps a ceiling decoration comparable to Night that Gérôme had painted for his friend. The home was inaugurated in 1860, but by 1865 the Prince sold it to a group of investors and it was eventually torn down in either 1891 or 1892, with many of its contents scattered and lost.