Collection: Jean-Léon Gérôme

Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living artist by 1880." The range of his works includes historical paintings, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits, subjects. Gérôme is considered among the most important painters from the academic period and was, with Meissonier and Cabanel, one of "the three most successful artists of the Second Empire". He was also a teacher with a long list of students, including Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, Edwin Lord Weeks and Osman Hamdi Bey, among others.

He studied under Charles Gleyre and Paul Delaroche. Among his canonical works are Pollice Verso, Slave Market in Rome, Pygmalion and Galatea, and Jerusalem. He worked primarily in religious painting and history painting. His work is rooted in neo-Pompeian.

The work sits within the Realism tradition, specifically the Academic Art current.