PLATE IV.—POLLICE VERSO
(In a Private Collection, United States)
The scenes from Roman antiquity repeatedly appealed to Gérôme's talent, notably in the case of the Games of the Circus, the dramatic value and brilliant colour of which he fully appreciated. In Pollice Verso, he shows us the victorious gladiator, who, in order to know whether or not he is to despatch his adversary, turns a questioning glance towards the Vestals, who invert their thumbs, decreeing death for the vanquished and gasping opponent.
His studio at Bougival held him for many a long day, while the season lasted. While there, he worked with extraordinary assiduity, barely giving himself time enough to appear among his guests and hastily swallow a few mouthfuls of the mid-day meal. He owned at one time another country house at Coulevon, near Vesoul, but this he sold to one of his former pupils, Muenier. He remained none the less the chief pride of his native town, where, even during the artist's life, there was a street bearing the name of Gérôme.
His favourite summering place, however, was in the heart of Normandy at Saint-Martin, near to Pont-Lévêque, where he possessed a delightful property.
"He is a charming man, of rare integrity and fascination. Very simple, too, like all men of real power, who need not exert themselves in order to prove their strength." It is after this fashion that M. Jules Claretie sums him up in his exquisite study of Contemporary Painters and Sculptors. M. Frédéric Masson, his faithful friend, has drawn the following excellent portrait of Gérôme: "A head firmly set upon a long neck, features vigorously modelled in acute angles, sunken cheeks, complexion bronzed, eyes brilliant and strangely black, moustache obstinate and bristling, hair almost kinky, and sprouting in massive clumps, … a straight nose set in a lean face, … figure exceedingly slender and flexible, waist medium, but well modelled."
Such he appears in his painting of himself as a sculptor in his studio, absorbed, in his alert and perennially youthful old age, by his new task of making polychrome statues. M. Aimé Morot, his son-in-law, has shown him to us in his intimate life, simple, natural, and at one and the same time alert and caustic. We find him also thoroughly alive in the fine bust by Carpeaux and in the medal by Chaplain, now in the Luxembourg.
M. Dagnan-Bouveret saw him under another aspect. In the portrait he has given us, we have the master authoritatively proclaiming his convictions. This distinguished artist, by the way, was formerly a pupil of Gérôme's. One day when he was complimenting the latter upon his method of teaching, Gérôme replied, in his loud, assertive voice: "When I undertake to do a thing, I do it to the very end. I am a man with a sense of duty."
As professor at the École des Beaux-Arts he continued to fulfil his duty for a period of forty years. While conducting his classes he showed himself grave and stern, even sardonic when so inclined. In front of a canvas too thickly coated, he would exclaim: "The paint shop man will be pleased"; or perhaps he would move around to get a side view and then play upon his words, saying: "How that picture stands out!"
He had a good many foreigners in his studio, Spaniards such as La Gandara, Americans like Bridgman and Harrison, and Russians such as the celebrated and courageous Verestschagen who, according to M. Léon Coutil, declared, in speaking of Gérôme, "Next to my dear Skobelof, he is the most resolute man that I have ever met."