Les baigneuses du harem by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Jean-Léon Gérôme
1824-1904 | French

Les baigneuses du harem
(The Bathers of the Harem)

Signed "J.L. Gérôme" (lower left)
Oil on canvas

This monumental masterpiece is among the most important of Jean-Léon Gérôme's iconic harem bather scenes still in private hands. Les baigneuses du harem, painted in 1901, reveals why Gérôme was among the world's most famous living artists in his day, renowned especially for his brilliantly alluring Orientalist scenes such as this one.

During his travels to Bursa in 1879, Gérôme visited the famed Turkish baths, going to great lengths to make careful studies of the mesmerizing atmosphere and luxurious architecture. Back in his studio in Paris, the artist's firsthand observations enabled him to recreate the fantastical magic of these baths. He installed the iconic blue İznik tiles on his walls, so that his Parisian models could pose in front of them. Les baigneuses du harem reveals Gérôme’s incredible ability to render these enticing interiors with intimacy and authenticity—even though he was never allowed into the women’s bathing quarters himself.

This work also epitomizes Gérôme's singular talent for capturing the human form perfectly in paint. The women are rendered with astonishing naturalism, and their pearl-white skin gleams with an ethereal radiance. These magnificent bather scenes were an instant sensation with Gérôme's audiences, inviting them into a mystical, faraway world. The first owner of the painting, in fact, paid an astonishing 6,600 francs for it—the equivalent of several years of wages for the average French laborer in 1901.

Gérôme painted only a handful of these intimate bather scenes with a few figures, and this masterpiece is the largest of all of them. It is bigger and more striking than all of the similar examples in prestigious museums, including those in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the State Hermitage Collection in St. Petersburg. It is even more substantial than the bath scene that he exhibited at the Salon of 1885 to widespread acclaim, The Great Bath at Bursa.

The most prominent French academic painter of the 19th century, Gérôme was also among the foremost inventors of Orientalist themes. After the year he spent in Rome with his teacher Paul Delaroche in 1843, he developed an insatiable appetite for traveling, which inspired his treks to Egypt, Turkey and North Africa. During his career, Gérôme achieved great popularity, exhibiting at countless Salons and wielding considerable influence as a defender of academic tradition.

His skill was so widely admired that he was appointed as professor of painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1863. Over many decades, he would go on to teach over 2,000 students there (including Mary Cassatt and Thomas Eakins) and publish the most important instructional book on drawing that would influence many great artists, including William Bouguereau, Odilon Redon and Pablo Picasso.

Painted 1901

Canvas: 38 1/2" high x 31" wide (97.79 x 78.74 cm)
Frame: 53" high x 45 3/4" wide x 3 1/2" deep (134.62 x 116.21 x 8.89 cm)

View the Dossier

Provenance:
Boussod, Valadon & Cie, Paris, acquired directly from the artist, 1901
Edward Brandus Inc., New York, acquired from the above in 1901 (6,600 ffr.)
Anon. Sale; Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, 20 Nov. 1947, lot 85
Renaissance, Inc., acquired at the above sale
Anon. Sale; Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, 24 March 1954, lot 70
Cianis, acquired at the above sale
Private Collection, USA
Private Collection, Europe
M.S. Rau, New Orleans

Literature:
Paris Photographs:Gérôme, Oeuvres, Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, vol. V
G. Ackerman, The Life and Work of Jean-Léon Gérôme, with a catalogue raisonné, London and New York, 1986 (republished 1992, 2000), p. 328, no. 380 (illus. p. 148)
L. de Cars, D. de Font-Reaulx and E. Papet, Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 – 1904): L’Histoire en Spectacle, exh. cat., The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; and Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 2010, p. 288 (illus. fig. 137)