Madrid’s Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Presents A Retrospective Devoted to Jean-Léon Gérome

Written by Carter Windmere Saturday, 14 April 2012 22:43

Madrid, Spain -  A major retrospective of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) opened on 15^th February 2011 at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, and can be seen until 22^nd May 2011. Jean-Léon Gérôme was one of the most famous and commercially successful French painters of his day. In the course of his long career, he was the subject of bitter controversy and criticism, in particular for defending the genre conventions of the waning academic style painting, under attack by realists and impressionists. However, Gérôme not was so much an heir to the academic tradition as the creator of totally new pictorial worlds, based on iconographic subjects. Historical painting, painting stories, painting everything ~ that was Gérôme's great passion. He intrigued the public with historical values and constant interplay of genres, blended in an aesthetic of collage and rearrangement. His skill in creating images, in presenting an illusion of reality through artifice and subterfuge went hand in hand with perfectly finished paintings that were themselves, imperfect. As a very unorthodox academic painter, Gérôme knew how to represent history as a dramatic spectacle and, by creating particularly convincing images, could make the spectator an eyewitness to events ranging from classical antiquity to the latest news.

Gérôme's paintings became widely known thanks to the engravings and photographic reproductions that started to be issued in 1859 on commission from publisher and art-dealer Adolphe Goupil (Gérôme’s future father-in-law). Gérôme chose his subject matter very skillfully with the intention of creating images that could readily become icons in popular culture, and in doing so, became immensely successful.

This exhibition (previously seen at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris), the first retrospective on this artist in Spain, sheds light on the most noteworthy features of historical painting and sculpture from his early career in the 1840s up to his last works. A young Gérôme joined Paul Delaroche’s atelier at the age of sixteen, where he quickly assimilated his master’s academic style. At the same time, he studied and absorbed the works of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, whose painstaking craftsmanship he adopted in his earliest portraits. A one-year sojourn in Italy brought the young Gérôme  into contact with Roman antiquities and archaeology, opening up a new world to him which he later brought to life in his paintings. Gérôme made several journeys to Egypt and the Middle East, attracted by the romantic and literary appeal of the Arab world. Paintings from this period feature the interiors of mosques, markets and baths, along with Ottoman warriors and dancers.

His meticulous attention to detail in the architecture, clothing and characters makes these theatrical compositions, but also almost ethnographic documents shedding light on an exotic, suggestive culture for an unfamiliar Western audience. In order to achieve this realism Gérôme made extensive use of photography (as many of his contemporaries did). The ancient world, 17th century France and the Napoleonic era were Gérôme's favorite historical periods. In his historical paintings, the romantic ambition to weave a close relationship with theater and performance combine with the rationalist impulse to provide accurate information. From this period, “Consummatum est” and “The Death of Caesar” are noteworthy examples of a feature common to many of Gérôme’s works ~ focusing on the moment immediately after the denouement of the action narrative.

From an early age, Gérôme took an interest in sculpture, but did not devote himself to it until 1878 with the piece entitled “The Gladiators”, inspired by the central group in one of his iconic historical paintings “Pollice Verso”. His concern for detail and for archaeological accuracy resulted in a degree of illusionism and a use of trompe l’oeil in his paintings and sculptures of this period that borders on the obsessive. One of his most famous coloured sculptures, "Tanagra" (1890) also shows the artist’s taste for the self-referential, in this case offering a game of mirrors between sculpture and painting.

Created in 1988, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation opened its museum in October 1992. Situated in Madrid’s golden triangle of art museums (with the Prado and the Reina Sofia) the museum occupies the Villahermosa Palace, refurbished for the foundation by Pritzker Prize winning architect José Rafael Moneo Vallés. The Thyssen-Bornemisza offers visitors an overview of art from the 13th century to the late 20th century. Nearly One Thousand works are on display, covering all periods and major schools of Western art including the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Romanticism and the art of the 19th and 20th Centuries right up to Pop Art. In addition, it boasts an important collection of 19th-century American painting, one of the largest in Europe.

The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum also offers a glimpse of the taste and preferences of the two persons principally responsible for the museum’s existence, Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (1875-1947) and Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen -Bornemisza (1921-2002). Amongst the highlights of the museum’s collection are works by Rembrandt, Hans Holbein the Younger, Albrecht Dürer, John Constable, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, Paul Klee, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Francis Bacon, Max Beckmann and Mark Rothko. Visit the museum’s website at .. http://www.museothyssen.org