JEAN-LÉON GÉRÔME
French, 1824–1904

Le Prisonnier

 Signed J. L. GEROME
Oil on canvas
17 x 29 inches (43.2 x 73.5 cm)
Framed: 26¼ x 38 inches (66.8 x 96.5 cm) 

Painted circa 1861, this is one of two known preliminary oil studies for one of Gérôme’s most famous works, Le Prisonnier, acquired from the artist’s dealer Goupil by the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes in 1861, exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1863 and the Exposition Universelle in 1867. The other oil study for the Nantes painting, View of the Nile at Luxor, is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Gérôme made a replica of Le Prisonnier in 1863 due to the popularity of the Salon painting and as the basis for a line engraving by the Belgian printmaker Joseph Franck. The engraving was published by Goupil et Cie. and became one of the most successful of the firm’s many reproductions of Gérôme’s works. Gérôme and Goupil began collaborating in 1859 and in 1863 their bond was further strengthened by Gérôme’s marriage to Adolphe Goupil’s daughter, Marie.

 Le Prisonnier depicts a shackled prisoner being transported in a boat on the Nile alongside the Temple of Luxor at Thebes.  “It is evening,” as Gerald M. Ackerman describes the subject, “the surface of the river glows with reflected light from a sky illuminated by a sun already beyond the horizon. An officer at the prow of the ship guards the prisoner; two Nubians pull the oars of the ship and an Arnaut, playing an oud at the stern of the ship, leans over the handcuffed prisoner to taunt him with a nasty song” (Gerald M. Ackerman, ed., Jean-Léon Gérôme, Exhibition catalogue, Dayton Art Institute, etc., 1972-73, p. 50).  It has been suggested that the model for the musician is Gérôme himself, and for the prisoner his teacher Charles Gleyre.

We are grateful to Dr. Emily M. Weeks for her assistance in cataloguing this work, which will be included in her forthcoming revision of the artist’s catalogue raisonné by Gerald M. Ackerman.

Provenance
Private Collection, Louisiana
Acquired from the above, 2021 

Exhibited
Doha, Qatar, Lusail Museum & Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Seeing is Believing: The Art and Influence of Gérôme, November 3, 2024 – February 22, 2025, illustrated

Literature
cf. Gerald Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme: Monographie Révisée, Catalogue Raisonné mis à Jour, Paris, 2000, pp. 248-9, nos. 134 and 135, for illustrations of the two finished versions of Le Prisonnier
cf. Gérôme & Goupil: Art and Enterprise [Exhibition catalogue], Musée Goupil, Bordeaux; Dahesh Museum of Art, New York; and The Frick Art & Historical Center, Pittsburgh, 2001, pp. 115-7, and catalogue cover, for illustrations of the Nantes version and the engraving by Joseph Franck, published by Goupil et Cie.

 P.O.R.

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