He solves the problem of how to paint a stock market crash, and looks at what is seen, visual revelation, and truth.
Gérôme
A series of history paintings showing events in France in the 1600s, even a painting of Saint Jerome. Where had his Roman reconstructions gone?
Several pro-Empire paintings, including the story of Cleopatra’s seduction of Caesar, as the Suez Canal was being built. Then his most famous painting of all: Pollice Verso.
In 3 years, he swung from conventional to highly novel narrative, covering themes of assassination, cynicism, prostitution, and looking.
Tracing the origin of a vivid allegory in late 19th century painting, normally attributed to the Dreyfus affair. When did the naked Truth first climb out of a well, and why?
Paintings of gladiatorial combat and martyrdom in the Colosseum had also been quite different before Gérôme’s ‘Ave Caesar’. Examples from Artemisia Gentileschi and others.
Gérôme’s ‘Ave Caesar’ was a visually stunning wide-angle spectacular, with its detailed reconstructions. Examined in the light of Claude, Girtin, Turner, and others.
His grand spectacle of The Age of Augustus was brave, but less successful than more modest paintings of Russian soldiers, or a comic duel.
Behind his traditional narrative paintings are his views on the Third Republic, the slaughter of the Paris communards in 1871, and the Dreyfus affair.
Vociferous opponent of Impressionism, hugely successful and popular, he taught more than 2,000 pupils. The start of a systematic account of his narrative paintings.
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