PLATE VII.—THE VENDOR OF RUGS
(In a Private Collection, United States)
From his numerous journeys to the East, Gérôme brought back many curious memoranda of picturesque scenes, which he subsequently converted into brilliant canvases. He excelled in reproducing the caressing beauty of shimmering carpets and the rippling sheen of silken textures.
In the company of this experienced and reliable guide, we wander from Jerusalem (1868) to the Great Bath at Broussa (1885), from a Corner of Cairo to Medinet and Fayoum. Here we have the severed heads in the Mosque of El Hecanin, the nude woman in the Moorish Bath, all the barbarity and all the grace of the Orient,—and invariably the anecdote, whether agreeable or sinister, blends with the matchless splendour of the landscape.
To this list must be added Recreation in Camp, a Souvenir of Moldavia (Salon of 1854), in which a soldier is dancing before his assembled comrades, to the sound of drums, fifes, and violins. A sentinel keeps watch. It is a picture taken in the act, and intensely real.
It is easy to detect the historian, or, to adopt the expression of M. Jules Claretie, the "Memoir Maker," possessed of the true gift, agreeable and individual, lurking behind every one of the works of this authoritative orientalist. He dedicated himself quite naturally and with great success to the interpretation of history and of the historic and literary anecdote.
His love of contrasts, his gift for depicting locality and somehow conveying the very atmosphere belonging to the varied scenes that are to be brought before the spectator's eye, give amplitude to such attractive little compositions as Louis XIV. and Molière (1863), and A Collaboration (1874); evoke the whole sombre tragedy of the death of Maréchal Ney, December 7, 1815, Nine o'clock in the Morning (1868); and appeal successively to our curiosity, our sympathy, or our admiration, with a Frederick II., conqueror of Silesia, playing on his flute, the King Flutist (1874, purchased by M. H. Oppenheim), His Gray Eminence (1874), in which the austere and dominant Father Joseph is making his way alone, down the stairway, in the presence of the obsequious courtiers; a Bonaparte day-dreaming before the Sphinx, Oedipus (1886), a Bonaparte at Cairo gazing at the town from the back of his Arab horse, a Bonaparte in Egypt, mounted on a white dromedary, dreaming of his omnipotence, of his conquest of the universe, and surrounded by his overdriven soldiers.
As a matter of fact, Gérôme made a sort of hero-worship of Napoleon and the Napoleonic epic, resembling in this respect his friend, M. Frédéric Masson, the celebrated historian of the Emperor, who was better qualified than any other writer to pay an eloquent tribute to this Bonaparte in Egypt.
"Bonaparte is no longer on the road to Syria, he is on the road to India; he is hesitating between the two halves of the world that he holds in his hands; he is weighing the destiny of Alexander against the destiny of Cæsar; he is asking himself whether Asia, to which he holds the key, is a fair exchange for Europe which he has just quitted; and while his dream embraces the universe, he leaves his human rubbish heap to suffer."
Gérôme is wholly himself when he has an anecdote to give us, whether it be subtle, humorous, kindly, or dramatic, and even,—why not use the word?—melodramatic.