I have at this time made serious progress

Summarize the work of the academic painter Jean - Léon Gérôme of a single image, you would choose "The Republic". He is the father of this massive and sculptural, creature with the false air of German singer, foster mother to the powerful arm draped in white, symbolizing the nation. Gérôme painting as a whole is: demo and missing luxury. The retrospective exhibition devoted to the painter of the 19th century that attempts to give a second life to the musée d'Orsay presents a version of this "Republic" which belongs to the commune of les Lilas. This allegory of the IIeRépublique plan is part of one of the favorite genres of the artist. Gérôme was the champion of the style in vogue at the time: the classical.

Gérôme is great effects and kitsch painting that Monet to Impressionism: a key of the movement. The two exhibitions held respectively at the Orsay Museum and the Grand Palace at this time were the same Commissioner, the Director of the musée d'Orsay bulimic, Guy Cogeval.

The words in Orsay is to demonstrate that Gérôme, known as the Bard of academicism, is a transgressive artist. Guy Cogeval wrote: "Under the mask of the tradition of the reaction, even regression, Gérôme concealed in a sneaky manner a daring." But where it dares to leave orthodoxy, is to capture the gaze of a wide audience. Gérôme is looking for a permanent glamour. A pop art of the 19th century. It is the slave of his quest for success and his work will prove it.

Lascivious women

Born in 1824 in Vesoul, the son of a jeweller who demonstrates an exceptional gift for drawing occurs at the age of sixteen in Paris, in the Studio of an artist featured at the time, Paul Delaroche. At home, he learns the combination of two genres that pay: the history paintings and genre painting (scenes of daily life). With him, he travelled in Italy and learned: "I knew nothing." I had everything to learn. I have at this time made serious progress.

Gérôme love women and what are his paintings of nudes that are the most mature. There is the same strain that Ingres subjected the female body to give it with lascivious movements. In 1850, he painted "The Gynoecium", which is scandal because of the subject. Dévêtues prostitutes are alanguies in an antique setting. Mysterious juxtaposition of Brown and blond creatures whose bodies are animated by strange twists. Glutes are oversized, thin hips and eyes under the effect of a drug case. It is one of his masterpieces.

Four years earlier, he produced "Fighting cocks". Naked young man with a young girl attending the battle between Kings of the chickens on a background of ancient monument. The characters are all grace, which contrasts significantly with the subject. This is the piece of painting which pointed out for the first time at the show. The artist will become the representative of a vision idealized of antiquity and the Orient. The risk of idealization, is that it turns to ridicule. His "snake charmer", 1880, was a postcard before time. An East of fantasy. In what is likely a room of the Palace of Topkapi in Istanbul, a small naked boy whose body is seized by a giant snake comes to enrubannés dignitaries. He painted inspired by orientalist pictures. "Pain of Pasha" facing his death Tiger, 1885, belongs to the same genus. Of the mélo in a lush setting where mingle different Eastern references (including a poem of the "Oriental" by Victor Hugo). One-third of the composition shows giant tawny pantelant to his master (who is just as much); the remaining two thirds are devoted to architecture, the Alhambra of Granada, copied from a photo. Hugo is more evocative: "which he therefore this Pasha, claimed the war / and that sad and dreamer cries like a woman.".

The exhibition also presents a cascade of re-enactments lush and animated by bright colours but a completely flat achievement. The most spectacular by format (128 x 260 cm): "Hearing of the ambassadors of Siam in Fontainebleau" (1864). The most useful for school textbooks: "Receipt of the Grand Condé by Louis XIV" (1873). Of Gérôme would retain only its debauchery of nudes, as in this scene from the "Turkish bath" which the heroin is a young woman who ostensibly exhibits his posterior.

Judith Benhamou-Huet blog on blogs.lesechos.frblogs.lesechos.fr