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A Chat by the Fireside

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1881 painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme
A Chat by the Fireside
ArtistJean-Léon Gérôme
Year1881
MediumOil on canvas
MovementOrientalism, academicism
Dimensions46.4 cm × 38 cm (18.25 in × 15 in)
LocationSpencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas
Accession1970.0008

A Chat by the Fireside is a painting by 19th Century French Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. It was completed in 1881 and today is held in the collections of The Spencer Museum of Art at The University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas where it is not on public view. The painting depicts a candid conversation between two men in a Ottoman interior.

Context

Jean-Léon Gérôme was born in 1824 in the village of Vesoul in Franche-Comté. Gérôme was first taught drawing in school by local artist Claude-Basile Cariage. After demonstrating talent, he was sent to Paris to begin studying under Paul Delaroche in 1840. In the early years of his career, Gérôme produced works of moderate success and he engaged in the typical studies and travels of a budding artist of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In 1847, he received a third place medal in the Paris Salon for his work The Cock Fight. This painting in particular embodies the Neo-Grec style that dominated Gérôme's earlier years. One contemporary commentator called Gérôme "the leader of the new school, called the Pompeists."

In 1856, Gérôme made his first journey to Egypt. This trip saw the artist travel down the Nile, through the Sinai Desert, and to the cities of the Levant like Jerusalem and Damascus. This journey served as the catalyst for Gérôme's Orientalist themes that would go on to define much of the middle of his career. Gérôme would undertake several more journeys through the Middle East and North Africa during his lifetime, during which he would gather props that would be brought back to France and used in the execution of his paintings. A Chat by the Fireside was painted by Gérôme once he had returned to Paris following travels to Ottoman Turkey in 1879.

By the time that A Chat by the Fireside was being composed by the painter, he was already nearing sixty years of age. In the years prior, Gérôme had become a veritable giant in the French fine art world of the mid 19th Century. He taught students at the Académie in Paris and was a stalwart of Academicism as he railed against the Impressionists. In this time at the midpoint of his career, Gérôme had simultaneously taken up a new medium by learning and eventually mastering sculpture as well. His debut as a sculptor came in 1878 at the Paris International Exhibition where he entered The Gladiators, an impressive life-size bronze rendering of the figures from his 1872 painting Pollice Verso. By the start of the 1880's, Gérôme's artistic pedigree was beyond reproach and he was perhaps also the most well-renowned living artist the world-over.

Composition

The subjects of A Chat by the Fireside are two men engaged in a conversation as they warm themselves before a fire. The men are posed candidly, paying no mind to the viewer. The man seated at left is dressed in the attire of an Ottoman soldier. His counterpart standing at right is dressed as a palace servant. Each has a pipe, though the soldier has discarded his to his right in order to warm his hands in the heat emanating from the fire. To the soldier's left, he has lain his musket against the wall. Behind the servant, a black cat sits at the edge of the hearth with its back turned to the viewer and staring into the fire. At the extreme right of the canvas, a hallway extends into darkened obscurity. Gérôme has signed the painting "J L GEROME" on the plinth of the fireplace near the feet of the seated soldier.

The Snake Charmer (Le Charmeur de Serpent), painted by Gérôme in 1879. Gérôme uses his depiction of dilapidated tiles to hint at a civilization past its prime. In this earlier painting, Gérôme also depicts the performance of the nude boy charming the snake to comment on the fallen morality of the East as well.

The two men are gathered around a large fireplace. Both the chimney of this fireplace and much of the wall the fireplace is built into are adorned with Iznik fritware tiles. These tiles are decorated with a pattern of flowering vines that is typical of such tiles produced by Iznik potters at the height of production in the 16th Century. The tiling is notably in a state of shabby disrepair. They are worn, stained, and scorched; some are even chipped, revealing the bare stone wall underneath. This is in keeping with the Orientalist theme of depicting the East as being filled with tarnished beauty from a bygone era of civilizational height. This is reminiscent of the tiled wall portrayed in another of Gérôme's works: The Snake Charmer from a couple years prior in 1879. Here too, Gérôme creates an image of beauty that is now fading into neglect.

The musket (tüfenk) laid against the wall to the left of the soldier is something of an anachronism. Such muskets were once common in the old regime of the Janissaries, before the corps was disbanded in the Auspicious Incident in 1826. By the later 19th Century, the Ottoman Army was purchasing the Mark 1 Peabody-Martini rifle from its manufacturer in the United States of America. Gérôme may have brought back an antique from his travels and also may be making a deliberate choice to paint the Ottoman military as relatively primitive.

Despite its Turkish theme, this painting was not actually executed by Gérôme while he was traveling in the East. Rather, Gérôme would gather costumes, props, and even set pieces while he travelled and bring them back to France where he would arrange scenes to paint. Here, Gérôme has dressed a pair of his regular models in costumes he collected from his travels and set them among accoutrements that would suggest an eastern interior.

Exhibition history

A Chat by the Fireside has been displayed at the following exhibitions:

Exhibition History
Exhibition Location Date
L'Exposition des Mirlitons Place Vendôme; Paris, France 1881
"Gérôme and his Pupils" Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center; Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York April 6, 1967 – April 28, 1967
"The Neglected 19th Century" H. Schickman Gallery; New York City February 1, 1970 – March 1, 1970
"From the Collection of the University of Kansas" The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Houston, Texas April 15, 1971 – June 13, 1971
"Jean-Léon Gêrôme" The Dayton Art Institute; Dayton, Ohio November 10, 1972 – December 31, 1972
"Jean-Léon Gérôme" The Minneapolis Institute of Art; Minneapolis, Minnesota January 26, 1973 – March 11, 1973
"Jean-Léon Gérôme" The Walters Art Museum; Baltimore, Maryland April 6, 1973 – May 20, 1973
"The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme" The J. Paul Getty Museum; Los Angeles, California June 15, 2010 – September 12, 2010
"Jean-Léon Gérôme: L'Histoire en Spectacle" La Musée d'Orsay; Paris, France October 18, 2010 – January 23, 2011
"Beyond Borders: The Life and Legacy of Rumi" The Spencer Museum of Art; The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas April 12, 2011 – April 24, 2011
"Empire of Things" The Spencer Museum of Art; The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas December 20, 2012 – April 12, 2015 (briefly interrupted)
"Gérôme and the Lure of the Orient" The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; Kansas City, Missouri February 5, 2014 – July 20, 2014
"Empire of Things" The Spencer Museum of Art; The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas October 15, 2016 – May 16, 2021

References

  1. ^ The collections of the Spencer Museum of Art; The University of Kansas; Lawrence, Kansas; https://spencerartapps.ku.edu/collection-search#/object/10880; retrieved Oct. 11, 2023.
  2. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. "Gérôme, Jean Léon", Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University, 1901.
  3. Besson, Nicolas François Louis. Les Annales Franc-Comtoises, vol. 11. Printed by Paul Jacquin in Besançon, 1899. pp. 255–56. Retrieved on Google Books, Oct. 11, 2023.
  4. Vors, Frédéric. "The Art Gallery: Jean-Léon Gérôme". The Art Amateur, vol. 1, no. 4, 1879, pp. 70–71. Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved Sept. 27, 2023, via JSTOR.
  5. Hering, Fanny Field. "Gérôme: The Life and Works of Jean-Léon Gérôme". Cassell Publishing Company, 1892. p. 28. Retrieved from Internet Archive on Oct. 12, 2023.
  6. Cateforis, David. "Didactic – Art Minute". The Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
  7. Glessner, R. W. "The Passing of Jean-Léon Gérôme". Brush and Pencil, vol. 14, no. 1. Published by the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 59. Retrieved from JSTOR Oct. 12, 2023.
  8. The Whirling Dervish, Stair Sainty Gallery, https://www.stairsainty.com/artwork/the-whirling-dervish-436/, Retrieved Sept. 30, 2023.
  9. Henderson, J. and J. Raby. "The Technology of Fifteenth Century Turkish Tiles: An Interim Statement on the Origins of the Iznik Industry." World Archaeology, vol. 21, no. 1, 1989, pp. 119–20. Retrieved from JSTOR Oct. 12, 2023.
  10. Denny, Walter B. "Quotations in and out of Context: Ottoman Turkish Art and European Orientalist Painting". Muqarnas, Vol. 10, Essays in Honor of Oleg Grabar, 1993. pp. 220–21. Brill Publishing. Retrieved on JSTOR Oct. 12, 2023.
  11. Ágoston, Gábor. "Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire". Columbia University Press, 2005, ISBN 9780521843133. p. 95. Retrieved on Google Books Oct. 12, 2023.
  12. Achtermeier, William O. "The Turkish Connection: The Saga of the Peabody-Martini Rifle". Man at Arms Magazine. Vol. 1, no. 2, 1979. Mowbray Publishing. pp. 12–21. Retrieved on The Wayback Machine Oct. 12, 2023.
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