Footnotes

Provenance: M. Donatis; Private collection, South America.


This is a life study of a model, probably painted in Gérôme’s Paris studio.
The artist painted the face of the young girl very carefully and accurately without idealization or simplification. Her lips are chapped, her eyes heavy with the boredom of a long sitting. All the drapery, and the bracelet and perhaps even the left arm, seems to have been improvised around a pure head study. This painting is an étude made in preparation for a figure in larger, finished painting whose compositions were already planned.

Another study under no. 226 in Gerald M. Ackerman’s Catalogue Raisonné of Gérôme’s paintings seems to have been worked up from this study. It shows subtle enhancements. The face is rounded by making both cheeks more visible, the bone structure of her face is clarified, the lips are no longer chapped, and a twinkle is added to her eye. Furthermore the veils around her head are more developed, perhaps from drapery arranged on a lay figure or a live model. Her head doesn’t look so flat as in the first study. This is how she appears in a painting cat. No. 339, La Terasse du Serial, of 1886, with the boredom returned to her eyes and the stick from the second sketch, no. 226, in her hands. The idealisation of the more finished sketch suggests it was developed out of the present sketch. It was not uncommon to keep a hired model for several days while sketching various poses, all to be used in the future. The attention that Gérôme gives to the planning and painting of a background figure indicates how carefully Gérôme prepared a composition.

But this sketch shows in its accurate depiction of a model with individual traits, that this sense of realism, although strong, intense even, could be toned down, idealised even, to fit into a composition of beautiful nudes where the young Lady did not play an important role.

The young slave also appears in no.240, Moorish Bath, no.2, 1874. under voluminous head scarves, her head is bent down. She is on her knees, working up coconut milk foam for a nude bather; her face, just a small patch, is seen in fore-shortening from above. This new position may be an improvisation of Gérôme’s from this sketch, kept in the studio for reference, or it may indicate another, now lost, study of the same model with her face lowered.

The sticker “Donatis Collection” on the back shows it once belonged to a known French Collection that included two other modest Gérôme, bought and sold in the 1870s.

This lot will be included in the next edition of the Catalogue Raisonné of Gérôme’s painting under no.226.2.

We are extremely grateful to Mr Gerald M. Ackerman for compiling this catalogue entry and for having kindly confirmed the authenticity of this work from photographs.