A Chat by the Fireside

Last updated • 5 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
A Chat by the Fireside
A Chat by the Fireside, Gerome, 1881.jpg
Artist Jean-Léon Gérôme
Year1881
MediumOil on canvas
Movement Orientalism, academicism
Dimensions46.4 cm× 38 cm(18.25 in× 15 in)
Location Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas
Accession1970.0008

A Chat by the Fireside is a painting by 19th Century French Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. It was completed in 1881 and today is held in the collections of The Spencer Museum of Art at The University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas where it is not on public view. The painting depicts a candid conversation between two men in a Ottoman interior. [1]

Contents

Context

Jean-Léon Gérôme was born in 1824 in the village of Vesoul in Franche-Comté. [2] Gérôme was first taught drawing in school by local artist Claude-Basile Cariage. [3] After demonstrating talent, he was sent to Paris to begin studying under Paul Delaroche in 1840. In the early years of his career, Gérôme produced works of moderate success and he engaged in the typical studies and travels of a budding artist of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In 1847, he received a third place medal in the Paris Salon for his work The Cock Fight . This painting in particular embodies the Neo-Grec style that dominated Gérôme's earlier years. One contemporary commentator called Gérôme "the leader of the new school, called the Pompeists." [4]

In 1856, Gérôme made his first journey to Egypt. This trip saw the artist travel down the Nile, through the Sinai Desert, and to the cities of the Levant like Jerusalem and Damascus. This journey served as the catalyst for Gérôme's Orientalist themes that would go on to define much of the middle of his career. [5] Gérôme would undertake several more journeys through the Middle East and North Africa during his lifetime, during which he would gather props that would be brought back to France and used in the execution of his paintings. A Chat by the Fireside was painted by Gérôme once he had returned to Paris following travels to Ottoman Turkey in 1879. [6]

By the time that A Chat by the Fireside was being composed by the painter, he was already nearing sixty years of age. In the years prior, Gérôme had become a veritable giant in the French fine art world of the mid 19th Century. He taught students at the Académie in Paris and was a stalwart of Academicism as he railed against the Impressionists. [7] In this time at the midpoint of his career, Gérôme had simultaneously taken up a new medium by learning and eventually mastering sculpture as well. His debut as a sculptor came in 1878 at the Paris International Exhibition where he entered The Gladiators, an impressive life-size bronze rendering of the figures from his 1872 painting Pollice Verso . [8] By the start of the 1880's, Gérôme's artistic pedigree was beyond reproach and he was perhaps also the most well-renowned living artist the world-over.

Composition

The subjects of A Chat by the Fireside are two men engaged in a conversation as they warm themselves before a fire. The men are posed candidly, paying no mind to the viewer. The man seated at left is dressed in the attire of an Ottoman soldier. His counterpart standing at right is dressed as a palace servant. Each has a pipe, though the soldier has discarded his to his right in order to warm his hands in the heat emanating from the fire. To the soldier's left, he has lain his musket against the wall. Behind the servant, a black cat sits at the edge of the hearth with its back turned to the viewer and staring into the fire. At the extreme right of the canvas, a hallway extends into darkened obscurity. Gérôme has signed the painting "J L GEROME" on the plinth of the fireplace near the feet of the seated soldier. [1]

The Snake Charmer (Le Charmeur de Serpent), painted by Gerome in 1879. Gerome uses his depiction of dilapidated tiles to hint at a civilization past its prime. In this earlier painting, Gerome also depicts the performance of the nude boy charming the snake to comment on the fallen morality of the East as well. Jean-Leon Gerome - Le charmeur de serpents.jpg
The Snake Charmer (Le Charmeur de Serpent), painted by Gérôme in 1879. Gérôme uses his depiction of dilapidated tiles to hint at a civilization past its prime. In this earlier painting, Gérôme also depicts the performance of the nude boy charming the snake to comment on the fallen morality of the East as well.

The two men are gathered around a large fireplace. Both the chimney of this fireplace and much of the wall the fireplace is built into are adorned with Iznik fritware tiles. These tiles are decorated with a pattern of flowering vines that is typical of such tiles produced by Iznik potters at the height of production in the 16th Century. [9] The tiling is notably in a state of shabby disrepair. They are worn, stained, and scorched; some are even chipped, revealing the bare stone wall underneath. This is in keeping with the Orientalist theme of depicting the East as being filled with tarnished beauty from a bygone era of civilizational height. This is reminiscent of the tiled wall portrayed in another of Gérôme's works: The Snake Charmer from a couple years prior in 1879. Here too, Gérôme creates an image of beauty that is now fading into neglect. [10]

The musket ( tüfenk ) laid against the wall to the left of the soldier is something of an anachronism. Such muskets were once common in the old regime of the Janissaries, before the corps was disbanded in the Auspicious Incident in 1826. [11] By the later 19th Century, the Ottoman Army was purchasing the Mark 1 Peabody-Martini rifle from its manufacturer in the United States of America. [12] Gérôme may have brought back an antique from his travels and also may be making a deliberate choice to paint the Ottoman military as relatively primitive.

Despite its Turkish theme, this painting was not actually executed by Gérôme while he was traveling in the East. Rather, Gérôme would gather costumes, props, and even set pieces while he travelled and bring them back to France where he would arrange scenes to paint. Here, Gérôme has dressed a pair of his regular models in costumes he collected from his travels and set them among accoutrements that would suggest an eastern interior. [1]

Exhibition history

A Chat by the Fireside has been displayed at the following exhibitions:

Exhibition History [1]
ExhibitionLocationDate
L'Exposition des Mirlitons Place Vendôme; Paris, France1881
"Gérôme and his Pupils" Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center; Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New YorkApril 6, 1967 – April 28, 1967
"The Neglected 19th Century"H. Schickman Gallery; New York CityFebruary 1, 1970 – March 1, 1970
"From the Collection of the University of Kansas" The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Houston, TexasApril 15, 1971 – June 13, 1971
"Jean-Léon Gêrôme" The Dayton Art Institute; Dayton, OhioNovember 10, 1972 – December 31, 1972
"Jean-Léon Gérôme" The Minneapolis Institute of Art; Minneapolis, MinnesotaJanuary 26, 1973 – March 11, 1973
"Jean-Léon Gérôme" The Walters Art Museum; Baltimore, MarylandApril 6, 1973 – May 20, 1973
"The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme" The J. Paul Getty Museum; Los Angeles, CaliforniaJune 15, 2010 – September 12, 2010
"Jean-Léon Gérôme: L'Histoire en Spectacle" La Musée d'Orsay; Paris, FranceOctober 18, 2010 – January 23, 2011
"Beyond Borders: The Life and Legacy of Rumi"The Spencer Museum of Art; The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KansasApril 12, 2011 – April 24, 2011
"Empire of Things"The Spencer Museum of Art; The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KansasDecember 20, 2012 – April 12, 2015 (briefly interrupted)
"Gérôme and the Lure of the Orient" The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; Kansas City, MissouriFebruary 5, 2014 – July 20, 2014
"Empire of Things"The Spencer Museum of Art; The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KansasOctober 15, 2016 – May 16, 2021

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orientalism</span> Imitation or depiction of Eastern culture

In art history, literature and cultural studies, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects of the Eastern world by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. Orientalist painting, particularly of the Middle East, was one of the many specialties of 19th-century academic art, and Western literature was influenced by a similar interest in Oriental themes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bashi-bazouk</span> Irregular soldier of the Ottoman army

A bashi-bazouk was an irregular soldier of the Ottoman army, raised in times of war. The army chiefly enlisted Albanians and Circassians as bashi-bazouks, but recruits came from all ethnic groups of the Ottoman Empire, including slaves from Europe or Africa. Bashi-bazouks had a reputation for being undisciplined and brutal, notorious for looting and preying on civilians as a result of a lack of regulation and of the expectation that they would support themselves off the land.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Léon Gérôme</span> French painter and sculptor (1824–1904)

Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living artist by 1880." His range of his works includes historical paintings, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits, and other subjects. He is considered one of the most important painters from this academic period. He was also a teacher with a long list of students.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dolmabahçe Palace</span> Palace in Istanbul, Turkey

Dolmabahçe Palace located in the Beşiktaş district of Istanbul, Turkey, on the European coast of the Bosporus strait, served as the main administrative center of the Ottoman Empire from 1856 to 1887 and from 1909 to 1922.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rüstem Pasha Mosque</span>

The Rüstem Pasha Mosque is an Ottoman mosque located in the Hasırcılar Çarşısı in the Tahtakale neighborhood of the Fatih district of Istanbul, Turkey, near the Spice Bazaar. Named after Rüstem Pasha, who served as Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Suleiman I, it was designed by the Ottoman imperial architect Mimar Sinan and completed in around 1563.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwin Lord Weeks</span> American Orientalist painter

Edwin Lord Weeks (1849–1903) was an American artist, noted for his Orientalist works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederick Arthur Bridgman</span> American painter (1847–1928)

Frederick Arthur Bridgman was an American artist known for his paintings of "Orientalist" subjects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Osman Hamdi Bey</span> Ottoman administrator, intellectual and artist (1842–1910)

Osman Hamdi Bey was an Ottoman administrator, intellectual, art expert and also a prominent and pioneering painter. He was the Ottoman Empire's first modern archaeologist, and is regarded as the founding father of both archaeology and the museum curator's professions in Turkey. He was the founder of Istanbul Archaeology Museums and of the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts known today as the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. He was also the first mayor of Kadıköy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gustave Boulanger</span> French painter

Gustave Clarence Rodolphe Boulanger was a French figurative painter and academic artist and teacher known for his Classical and Orientalist subjects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Şeker Ahmed Pasha</span> Turkish painter

Ahmed Ali Pasha, better known as "Şeker" Ahmed Pasha, was an Ottoman painter, soldier and government official. His nickname "Şeker" meant "sugar" in Turkish, which he earned due to his very easy-going nature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ</span> French painter

Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ was an Orientalist French painter and sculptor. He was strongly influenced by the works and teachings of Charles Gleyre and Jean-Léon Gérôme. Lecomte du Nouÿ found inspiration for his art through extensive travels to Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Romania and Italy. The thematic content of Lecomte du Nouÿ's work was mainly figural, but also spanned over a vast range of imagery throughout his career, including classical, historical and religious.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">İznik</span> District and municipality in Bursa, Turkey

İznik is a municipality and district of Bursa Province, Turkey. Its area is 753 km2, and its population is 44,236 (2022). The town is at the site of the ancient Greek city of Nicaea, from which the modern name derives. The town lies in a fertile basin at the eastern end of Lake İznik, with ranges of hills to the north and south. As the crow flies, the town is only 90 kilometres southeast of Istanbul but by road it is 200 km around the Gulf of İzmit. It is 80 km by road from Bursa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stanisław Chlebowski</span> Polish painter

Stanisław Chlebowski (1835–1884) was a Polish painter. He was a renowned specialist in Oriental themes and history painting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarkis Diranian</span> Armenian orientalist painter

Sarkis Diranian was an Armenian orientalist painter. Originally from the Ottoman Empire, he was established for many years in Paris.

<i>The Snake Charmer</i> Painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme

The Snake Charmer is an oil-on-canvas Orientalist painting by French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme produced around 1879. After it was used on the cover of Edward Said's book Orientalism in 1978, the work "attained a level of notoriety matched by few Orientalist paintings," as it became a lightning-rod for criticism of Orientalism in general and Orientalist painting in particular, although Said himself does not mention the painting in his book. It is in the collection of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, which also owns another controversial Gérôme painting, The Slave Market.

<i>Cleopatra and Caesar</i> (painting) Painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Cleopatra and Caesar, also known as Cleopatra Before Caesar, is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French Academic artist Jean-Léon Gérôme, completed in 1866. The work was originally commissioned by the French courtesan La Païva, but she was unhappy with the finished painting and returned it to Gérôme. It was exhibited at the Salon of 1866 and the Royal Academy of Arts in 1871.

<i>Truth Coming Out of Her Well</i> 1896 painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme

La Vérité sortant du puits armée de son martinet pour châtier l'humanité is an 1896 painting by the French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme.

<i>La Toilette</i> (Bazille) Painting by Frédéric Bazille

La Toilette is an oil-on-canvas painting by the 19th century French impressionist artist Frédéric Bazille, executed in 1869–1870, which has been in the collection of the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, France since 1968. He produced it a few months before his death in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.

<i>Bashi-Bazouk</i> (Jean-Léon Gérôme) 1869 painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Bashi-Bazouk is a painting by French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme. Done in oil on canvas, the painting depicts a Bashi-bazouk, an irregular soldier of the Ottoman Empire. The painting is currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

<i>Tanagra</i> (Gérôme sculpture) Polychromic marble sculpture created by French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme

Tanagra is a polychromic marble sculpture created by French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) as a personification of the "spirit of Tanagra," his own mythic invention tied to the Tanagra figurines from the village of that name in ancient Greece. The sculpture was first shown at the Paris Salon of 1890. Gérôme subsequently created smaller, gilded bronze versions of Tanagra; several versions of the "Hoop Dancer" figurine held by Tanagra; two paintings of an imaginary ancient Tanagra workshop; and two self-portraits of himself sculpting Tanagra from a living model in his Paris atelier. These sculptures and paintings comprise a complex, self-referential artistic program in which one of the most celebrated artists of his generation explored reception of Classical antiquity, creative inspiration, doppelgängers, and female beauty.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 The collections of the Spencer Museum of Art; The University of Kansas; Lawrence, Kansas; https://spencerartapps.ku.edu/collection-search#/object/10880; retrieved Oct. 11, 2023.
  2. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. "Gérôme, Jean Léon", Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University, 1901.
  3. Besson, Nicolas François Louis. Les Annales Franc-Comtoises, vol. 11. Printed by Paul Jacquin in Besançon, 1899. pp. 255–56. Retrieved on Google Books, Oct. 11, 2023.
  4. Vors, Frédéric. "The Art Gallery: Jean-Léon Gérôme". The Art Amateur, vol. 1, no. 4, 1879, pp. 70–71. Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved Sept. 27, 2023, via JSTOR.
  5. Hering, Fanny Field. "Gérôme: The Life and Works of Jean-Léon Gérôme". Cassell Publishing Company, 1892. p. 28. Retrieved from Internet Archive on Oct. 12, 2023.
  6. Cateforis, David. "Didactic – Art Minute". The Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
  7. Glessner, R. W. "The Passing of Jean-Léon Gérôme". Brush and Pencil, vol. 14, no. 1. Published by the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 59. Retrieved from JSTOR Oct. 12, 2023.
  8. The Whirling Dervish, Stair Sainty Gallery, https://www.stairsainty.com/artwork/the-whirling-dervish-436/, Retrieved Sept. 30, 2023.
  9. Henderson, J. and J. Raby. "The Technology of Fifteenth Century Turkish Tiles: An Interim Statement on the Origins of the Iznik Industry." World Archaeology, vol. 21, no. 1, 1989, pp. 119–20. Retrieved from JSTOR Oct. 12, 2023.
  10. Denny, Walter B. "Quotations in and out of Context: Ottoman Turkish Art and European Orientalist Painting". Muqarnas, Vol. 10, Essays in Honor of Oleg Grabar, 1993. pp. 220–21. Brill Publishing. Retrieved on JSTOR Oct. 12, 2023.
  11. Ágoston, Gábor. "Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire". Columbia University Press, 2005, ISBN   9780521843133. p. 95. Retrieved on Google Books Oct. 12, 2023.
  12. Achtermeier, William O. "The Turkish Connection: The Saga of the Peabody-Martini Rifle". Man at Arms Magazine. Vol. 1, no. 2, 1979. Mowbray Publishing. pp. 12–21. Retrieved on The Wayback Machine Oct. 12, 2023.