JEAN-LÉON GÉRÔME | Baigneuse à la piscine de Brousse

Georges C. Zervudachi, Alexandria (his sale: Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 16 May 1913, no. 36)

Goupil & Cie., Paris, stock no. 30870 (acquired from the above on 17 May 1913)

Leonard Tauber, Neuilly-sur-Seine (acquired from the above, on 19 May 1913)

Goupil & Cie., Paris, stock no. 30908 (acquired from the above on 19 June 1913)

Galerie Joseph Allard, Paris (acquired from the above on 9 December 1913)

Gérôme's depiction of a young woman in the hammam in the company of her attendant epitomises the bath scenes central to his work in the 1880s and 1890s, and which built on the success of his most celebrated bath scene, La Grande piscine à Brousse shown to great acclaim at the Paris Salon of 1885.

The interior, with its wall of blue tiles, may have been assembled from photographs, memories, and Gérôme's own props (sections of his studio were covered with tiles he had brought back with him from the Middle east). He visited Constantinople twice in 1875 where he met the Abdullah brothers, the famous Turkish photographers and founders of the Abdullah Frères firm, as well as his old student Seker Ahmet Pasha. Later, in 1877, Abdullah Frères arranged the taking of specific photographs of the city, mainly of interiors, which Gérôme was able to use to work up backgrounds such as the present one. The city of Bursa may also have been an inspiration for the bath scenes. Here, he visited the Sinan Baths and made sketches of the interior: 'As the temperature was extremely high, I did not hesitate to make myself [...] completely naked; seated on my campstool, my colour box on my knees, my palette in my hand, I was a little grotesque,' he writes. Ultimately, however, all his bathing scenes (the settings apart) are figments of the artist's imagination, as no man, let alone a Western tourist, would ever have had access to a women's hammam. The figures in these paintings were, in fact, posed, and carefully studied, in the light of his Paris studio. 

Intimate scenes bath scenes like this bring to mind the 'seen through the keyhole' glimpses of women at their toilette by Gérôme's contemporary and friend Edgar Degas. Paradoxically, however, though painted in the rigorous French academic style - in contrast to the avant-garde Impressionist style adopted by Degas - Gérôme's painting is the more radical. While Degas' women are unaware that they are being observed, Gérôme's model engages overtly with the viewer, fully cognizant that she is the object of the viewer's gaze and returning it in kind.

To be included in Dr Emily M. Weeks's revision of the artist's catalogue raisonné by Gerald Ackerman.