Page 15 - Gallery 19C Gérôme Catalogue

15
Such momentum, of course, could not last. Beset by a series of new obstacles – competition with Impressionism, a renewed interest in the art of the Dutch and Flemish masters, a backlash against conspicuous consumption, of which the acquisition of high-priced paintings was an obvious part, and the triumphant return of an entire school of European-trained American artists, anxious to make their mark – led to a decline in the taste for Gérôme’s art (and Academic art more generally) almost as meteoric as its rise. In 1887, at the sale of Stewart’s widow’s estate, paintings by Gérôme struggled to reach even half of their previous sales prices, with Circus Maximus achieving only $7,100 (31,000 francs), or a quarter of its original purchase price.22
Despite the vagaries of the American art market, and the continued underestimation of Academic art even to this day, interest in Gérôme has been revitalized in recent years. (Indeed, the very fact that the group of paintings featured in this catalogue derives from a single, private American collection suggests the continued allure of the artist in the United States.) Thus, while the renowned scholar, collector, and art dealer Robert Isaacson (1927–1998) was able to purchase First Kiss of
the Sun (cat. no. 5) in New York for $600 in 1962 (another point during which Academic and Orientalist art were considered passé and abstraction became the order of the day), it sold in 1999 for one thousand times that much.23 Two years later, the relationship between Goupil and Gérôme was explored in both an exhibition and a scholarly catalogue, with a particular emphasis on the role of Goupil in the mass marketing and reception of the artist in the United States.24 More ambitious,
and equally appreciative of Gérôme’s American presence, was the Getty Center’s Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme, the first monographic exhibition of the artist in the United States since 1972, when the author of Gérôme’s catalogue raisonné, Gerald Ackerman, mounted a survey of the artist’s oeuvre with works drawn largely from American collections.25 Such Academic and institutional interest has done much to reposition Gérôme in the art historical canon, as well as in the popular imagination, and has reintroduced an entire generation of American art lovers to the complexities and surprising topicality of his work.26 Gérôme’s enduring renaissance in this country, then, has certainly been our gain. For, in the storied histories and subject matter of his paintings, including those five here, lie the records and foundations upon which the American art world was and will continue to be built.
Matthias H. Arnot's Picture Gallery., 1913