Page 31 - Gallery 19C Gérôme Catalogue

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Gérôme’s memoirs indicate that he encountered the same difficulty with other works at this time, including The Moorish Bath (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
(see Gerald M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme : monographie révisée, catalogue raisonné mis à jour, Paris, 2000, pp. 92, 272).
Gerald M. Ackerman Archives, folder for Bisharin Warriors, typewritten note, November 11, 1979.
In the urban setting of Cairo, Gérôme took a particular interest in elaborate depictions of the Arnauts, descendants of the Albanian soldiers brought to Egypt by the Pasha Muhammad ‘Ali (circa 1769–1849, ruled 1805–48), and their most colorful division, the Ottoman irregular mercenaries known colloquially as bashi- bazouks (literally “damaged head”, meaning leaderless or without discipline). These military subjects were the infamous remains of a fearsome force that Muhammad ‘Ali had decimated years before, in an effort to consolidate his power. Gérôme’s portraits of these soldiers, often glossed with an element of humor
or subtle derision, would form a distinctive and popular subgroup within his Orientalist oeuvre after 1867.
As Ellen Strain and others have noted, the field of ethnography was only loosely defined by the middle of the 19th century, and bordered on anecdotal or popular knowledge (Ellen Strain, “Exotic Bodies, Distant Landscapes: Touristic Viewing and Popularized Anthropology in the Nineteenth Century,” Wide Angle, vol, 18, no. 2, April 1996, pp. 70–100). Gérôme’s efforts to faithfully record the features and costumes of those he encountered first-hand during his travels stand as noteworthy attempts to elevate this practice to science.
The artist’s other major painting of this year, the epic Pollice Verso
(Phoenix Art Museum), though also rigorous in its carefully researched detail, followed a different philosophical and artistic trajectory.
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