He was destined to make still other journeys, notably that of 1868 in company of Messrs. Bonnet, Frédéric Masson, and Lenoir; and his companions paid tribute to his unfailing spirits and his powers of endurance. But at the age of forty he married. The bride was Mlle. Goupil, daughter of the well-known picture dealer.
He was a thorough man of the world and a favoured guest of the Duc d'Aumale, who appreciated his ready wit and bought his After the Masquerade for the sum of 20,000 francs. In 1865 he received from the Beaux-Arts and the Imperial Household an order for The Reception of the Siamese Ambassadors at Fontainebleau.
Gérôme was also numbered among Compiègne's habitual visitors, along with Berlioz, Gustave Doré, Guillaume, Merimée, Viollet-le-Duc, and others. M. Moreau-Vauthier, who with pious zeal has collected the more interesting anecdotes of his life, relates that he had a special gift for organizing charades: he was scene setter and costumer. At Fontainebleau, he took the Empress out alone in a row-boat.
Surrounded by devoted friends, such as Augier, Charles Blanc, Dumas, Clery, his brother-in-law, Frémiet, Gérôme continued his laborious and tranquil life in his vast atelier on the Boulevard de Clichy.
His days were passed in drawing and painting in his canvases. Towards the end of the afternoon he would mount his horse and take a turn in the Bois. He exhibited annually up to the year of the war. After that, he lived in a sort of retirement until 1874, when, after a trip to Algeria with G. Boulanger and Poilpot, he won a medal of honour. A Collaboration, Rex Tibicen (The King Flutist), and His Gray Eminence, exhibited simultaneously, revealed him in full possession of his ingenious and many-sided art.
New and resounding triumphs awaited him at the Exposition Universelle of 1878, where he first revealed himself as a sculptor. As a matter of fact, he had for a long time amused himself at modelling in clay. He used to go to Frémiet's studio to do his modelling, and Frémiet, by way of exchange, would come to paint in his. His two groups, Gladiators and Anacreon, Bacchus and Cupid, won him a second class medal to take its place beside the medal of honour he had previously received for his paintings. That same year, at the age of fifty-four, he was raised to the rank of Commander. Cham expressed the joy of all his friends by writing to him wittily: "I follow the example of your ribbon, I fall upon your neck."
He was yet to gain still further honours: a first class medal as sculptor, in 1881; to be declared Hors Concours (Not entered for Competition) at the Expositions of 1889 and 1900; and to be named Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour.
From 1880 onward, excepting for a few flying visits to Spain and Italy, Gérôme lived at his hotel in Paris, where he kept up a rather lavish establishment, including horses and dogs, up to the time of the successive deaths of his father and his son. It was the latter for whose tomb he carved a touching figure of Grief.
PIERRE LAFITTE & CIE, PARIS