Attributed to Jean-Léon Gérôme

Eric Turquin, Paris
Private Collection, France 

Strip lined. Overall the work presents well and the surface is stable, aside from minor surface dirt and dust; finely patterned stable craquelure across the picture surface that is concurrent with age; minor abrasion along the upper extreme edge; and some thinness in his jacket. Under UV: there is broadly applied retouching in the background along the right lower and lower edges, with additional smaller retouches scattered in the background. There are some small retouches to his face, with concentrated areas on the bridge of his nose, his proper right ear, and proper right nostril.
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After the closing of Paul Delaroche’s Parisian atelier, in 1843 the young Jean-Léon Gérôme accompanied his teacher to Italy. There he went on numerous sketching excursions, preferring to study people, nature, and costumes from life rather than in the great museums of Rome (Gerald M. Ackerman, The Life and Work of Jean- Léon Gérôme, with a Catalogue Raissoné, London, 1986, p. 23) Though the present work is unsigned, it does bear similarities to two studies fully attributed to Gérôme of a distinctive, dark-haired peasant man, which were also completed in Rome in 1843: Head of a Peasant of the Roman Campagna (profile) (circa 1843-44, Musée Magnin, Dijon) and Head of a Peasant of the Roman Campagna (front view) (1843, Private Collection). The presumed identity of the present sitter, Giacomo Orlandi di Subiaco, is based on a head study done in Rome in 1847 by the Cologne painter Johannes Niessen (1821 - 1910), which was inscribed Giacomo Orlandi di Subiaco by the artist. Edgar Degas has also depicted this model in a study on paper.