JEAN-LÉON GÉRÔME | JOUEUR DE VIOLON

Anderson Galleries, LLC, Beverly Hills, California (acquired in 1999 as Attributed to Jean-Léon Gérôme, Portrait of a Young Man) 

Gerald M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme, monographie révisée, catalogue raisonné mis à jour, Paris, 2000, p. 210, no. 9.4, illustrated p. 211 (as Attributed to Jean-Léon Gérôme) 

Like many Academic students, Jean-Léon Gérôme made copies of famous paintings as part of his early artistic education. This painting—after a work believed to be by Raphael during the nineteenth century but later attributed to Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547)—was painted during his residency in Rome in the 1840s, when he visited the collections at the Palace Sciarra-Colonna. The three-quarter profile of the sitter, as well as his appraising look outward at the viewer, had a profound influence on Gérôme’s subsequent portraits, as witnessed in his Tondo of a Child’s Head with Mask and Sword (circa 1861, Private Collection) and the Bisharin Warrior of 1872 (Private Collection). A related drawing was included in the second volume of Charles Bargue’s iconic Cours de dessin, a collaborative venture produced with Gérôme between 1868 and 1871 (plate 44).