Jean-Léon Gérôme

Dijon (1858)
Haro (sale, Paris, 1881)
Jay Turner
Sterling H. Sockley House, Regent's Park, London
Arthur Tooth & Sons, London
Henry Wyndham
French & Co., New York
H. Schickman Gallery, New York
Joseph J. Dodge, Jacksonville, Florida (by 1972)
A Middle Eastern Prince (and sold, Sotheby's Parke Bernet, New York, October 12, 1979, lot 313, illustrated)
Private Collection, California (and sold, Sotheby's, New York, October 24, 1989, lot 65, illustrated)
Private Collector, New York (acquired at the above sale)

Possibly, Paris, Salon, 1857, no. 1161 (as Memnon et Sésostris)
Poughkeepsie, New York, Vassar College Art Gallery, Gérôme and his Pupils, 1967, no. 2
New York, Schickman Galleries, The Neglected 19th Century, 1970, no. 19
St. Petersburg, Florida, Museum of Fine Arts: Jacksonville, Florida, Cummer Art Gallery, Remnants of Things Past, 1971, no. 52
Dayton, Ohio, The Dayton Art Institute; Minneapolis, Minnesota, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Baltimore, Maryland, The Walters Art Gallery, Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), 1972-73, pp. 36-7, no. 5, illustrated

Théophile Gautier, "Gérôme: Tableaux, Etudes et Croquis de Voyage," L'Artiste, December 28, 1856, p. 23
Fanny Field Hering, The Life and Works of Jean Léon Gérôme, New York, 1892, p. 66
Jean-Léon Gérôme 1824-1904, exh. cat., Musée de Vesoul, 1981, pp. 106-7, mentioned under no. 122
Gerald M. Ackerman, The Life and Work of Jean-Léon Gérôme with a Catalogue Raisonné, London, 1986, p. 48, 200, no. 73, illustrated
Herman de Meulenaere, Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth Century Painting, Belgium, 1992, p. 59, illustrated
Gerald M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme, monographie révisée, catalogue raisonné mis à jour, Paris, 2000, p. 232, no. 73, illustrated

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This work has been restored. The canvas has an old European glue lining that is still effective. There are no visible structural repairs to the work and no abrasions to the fine paint layer. There are four tiny dots of retouching in the upper right sky and one retouch above the back of the large camel on the left side. This is clearly a work in extremely good condition, and it should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The Colossi of Memnon have stood guard at the ancient necropolis of Thebes since 1350 BC. Standing at a towering height of 18 meters, they were intentionally imposing and would have made a powerful impression on any visitor. Gérôme was known to have painted the subject a number of times, including a view from the side in The Colossi of Thebes, Memnon and Sesostris (1856, Musée Georges Garrett de Vesoul), Caravan Passing the Colossi of Memnon, Thebes (1857. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes), and the oil sketch of the present view, Memnon and Sesostris (fig. 1, 1856, private collection). The present work, which depicts camels resting beside the colossus of Memnon, lacks the third of the original composition recorded in the Gérôme Paris Photographs at the Cabinet d'Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (vol. IV, no. 10) and exhibited at the Salon of 1857 as Memnon et Sésostris. As the placement of the signature and all other details correspond exactly with the original photograph, it is likely that the present picture is a result of the former having been cut down (ommitting the portion with a view of the colossus of Sesostris); alternatively, this might be a second version of the wider composition.

This work was painted after Gérôme's first ambitious and long anticipated visit to Egypt in 1856, a journey which started, as Gérôme himself describes, "with friends, being one of five - all of us with little money and abundant spirits! ... We rented a sailboat and stayed for four months on the Nile, hunting, painting and fishing, from Damietta to Philae... We returned to Cairo, where we passed four months more in a house in old Cairo, which Sulieman Pasha rented to us" (as quoted in Ackerman, 1986, p. 44)

Ackerman writes that in the Salon of 1857 in Paris "several landscapes drawn from the experinces of this trip were exhibited. The vigor of the drawing, the strength of the touch, and lack of refinement makes it seem almost as if the picture were painted on the spot or on the houseboat where the painter maintained a studio. The brightness of the light makes it seem painted in immediate reaction to the blinding light of Egypt, without aesthetic monitoring. Of all Gérôme's Egyptian pictures, only a few have the feeling - like this one - of having been painted on location" (Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1972-73, exh. cat., p. 36).