Publication by DPDF 2007 “Visual Culture” Fellow Emerson Boyer, featured in Reconsidering Gérôme, edited by Scott Christopher Allan and Mary Morton:

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) was an undisputed professional success during his lifetime. Crowds flocked to see his vividly rendered historical and Orientalist compositions, and thanks to the mass marketing of his work through mechanical reproduction, he reached audiences on an unprecedented scale.

From the outset, however, his success met with critical hostility. Émile Zola, champion of Édouard Manet, dismissed Gérôme as a cynical manufacturer of anecdotal images for popular consumption—a critique repeatedly echoed by historians of modern art. In light of revisionist and postmodern trends over the past four decades, however, Gérôme’s work is now being approached with unprecedented seriousness and refreshing creativity. The ten essays in this volume go far in challenging critical biases against the artist and suggesting new avenues of research. These papers indeed suggest that we are just beginning to learn how to “read” Gérôme’s paintings in their full complexity.

Publication Details

Title
Monographic Impressions
Authors
Bowyer, Emerson Kent
Publisher
Getty Publications
Publish Date
September 2010
ISBN
978-1606060384
Citation
Bowyer, Emerson Kent, Monographic Impressions (Getty Publications, September 2010).
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