Jean-Léon Gérôme

Lion in the Desert

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Auction Closed

March 29, 02:21 PM GMT

Estimate

30,000 - 50,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Property of the artist Jon Swihart, Los Angeles

Jean-Léon Gérôme

French

1824 - 1904

Lion in the Desert

inscribed and signed by Morot Esquisse de J.L Gérôme/ A. Morot lower right

oil on canvas

Unframed: 29.2 by 41.2cm., 11½ by 16¼in.

Framed: 43.5 by 55.5cm., 17 by 21¾in.

We are grateful to Dr Emily M. Weeks for her assistance in cataloguing this work which will be included in her revision of the artist's catalogue raisonné by Gerald M. Ackerman.

Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 11 December 1972, lot 124

Shickman's Gallery, New York (by 1973)

Purchased by the present owner circa 1997

Gerald M. Ackerman, The Life and Work of Jean-Léon Gérôme, Paris, 1986, p. 298, no. 528 B, catalogued (as Oil Sketch for Lion Drinking from a Desert Stream)
Gerald M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Monographie révisée, Paris, 2000, p. 370, no. 528.2, catalogued & illustrated (as Atelier de Gérôme: Lion buvant, esquisse à l'huile)

This work is the oil sketch for a painting in the Albright-Knox Gallery, New York.

In the 1880s, the lion was a recurring subject that Gérôme focused on as French animalier artists were increasingly popular among the general public. Gérôme would have based this composition on contemporary photographs of the oasis, most probably in the Sinai desert.

The present work is signed by Aimé Morot, the artist's son-in-law who was a painter and sculptor in his own right.