NONE of us develops in a vacuum, there is no such thing as self-taught - that’s mere wishful thinking. We are all subject to a myriad of influences, at every stage of our development.
We humans love to label things, to categorise. It’s soothing to us. We diligently file away, satisfied and reassured, shaping order from chaos.
Such is the case with Jean-Leon Gerome, a French artist practising in the mid to late 19th century. Gerome was a consummate painter and sculptor, classified as an Academic artist but how accurate is that?
I love Gerome’s painting of Pygmalion and Galatea. There have been many renderings of the subject, but none as lovely as that by Gerome. My love for this painting prompted me to consider it both in its historical context and see it, if I could, through Gerome’s lens.
Gerome painted Pygmalion and Galatea in 1890 but his career started much earlier, so let’s look at his early influences, and contextualise them.
Gerome’s first tutor was Paul Delaroche, whose work was informed by the artistic trends of Romanticism, Neoclassicism, and Academicism. That’s a lot of -isms but these are trends, ideas that start out like wisps of smoke, barely detectable, and which gather force, finally coalescing into a unique, palpable and definable thing - ready to be labelled, albeit after the event.
Delaroche took Gerome to Italy in 1843, where he introduced his 19-year-old charge to the works of the Renaissance - of da Vinci, Michelangelo, Bernini and Raphael. Humanists all.
Renaissance Humanism had its roots in the 1300s, coming to prominence in the 1500s. Humanists were interested in the classical world of Ancient Greece and Rome. Their art was concerned with figurative works and human concerns, in contrast to the earlier Medieval period which focussed on iconography and religious art.
Gerome returned to Paris in 1844 and soon became a student of France’s most prominent art school, the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris. Here Gerome received his Academic training which was also informed by the now familiar Humanist styles of the Renaissance, as well as the French and Italian Baroque.
Realism was in full swing in Paris of the 1840s, pushing back against the out-moded classical, academic approach that sought to idealise its subject matter. The Realists wanted something more gritty.
In the Neoclassic, Romantic tradition, brush strokes were not evident, every turn of the form was perfected by demi-planes of subtle temperature shifts and tones which resulted in a very smooth surface texture. The Realists were about to change all that.
It’s important to understand that art movements are not merely fashions, or in any way capricious. Art is always a reflection of society.
Europe was in turmoil, and Paris was the epicentre of unrest. Economic expansion in the mid 1800s had given rise to increased hardship for the lower classes and the clamour for social reform. Reformists campaigned for women’s rights, political representation for all men, the abolition of slavery, prison and workplace reforms, improvements to public health, and education.
By February 1848, Paris was in the grip of the French Revolution. After a decade of social unrest and nationalistic sentiment, the King was forced to abdicate, voting rights for men were extended beyond the gentry, and the Second Republic was born. The shaping of modern Europe had begun.
On the art front, colourists had started making paint in tubes for artists, freeing them from their studios, and by the early 1870s, Impressionists were beating their path away from the constraints of Realism. France was about to lose the Franco-Prussian war to Germany, ending French dominance in Europe and handing it to Germany, thus paving the way to World War I.
Gerome was now 46-years-old. Established as France’s pre-eminent painter, he had considerable influence having taught thousands of students at his alma mater, the Academie. He was a champion of the Neoclassical Revival style Neo-Grec, a Greek revival style which influenced art and architecture in the 20 years following the Revolution of 1848.
Impressionism had waned by 1886 and Art Nouveau was in full swing when Gerome painted Pygmalion and Galatea in 1890, 14 years before his death in 1904, aged 79.
So much flux, so many changes to culture, society and art.
Now that we have a sense of what was going on around Gerome, the art movements and the social and economic turmoil, and the portents of what was to come, we can turn our attention to Pygmalion and Galatea and locate some of the influences that informed Gerome’s work.
The painting centres on the moment when the sculptor Pygmalion kisses the carved out image of his ideal woman, with which (not yet with whom) he has fallen in love, just as the goddess Aphrodyte brings her to life for him.
Gerome has used Ovid’s poem as his inspiration - a typical Academic opening move. He has chosen to pose the sculpture in movement, contrapposto redolent of Humanism, and Neo-Grec.
The sculptor Pygmalion takes the inferior, submissive position, as the athletic Galatea reaches down to meet his embrace, while restraining his right hand - a reflection of female emancipation.
Gerome has decided to paint the more modest though very sensual rear view of Galatea, she’s not as objectified as she might be and there’s no false modesty or shame as might be required from the front view. Early Modernist.
The charming little putto is essentially Baroque, but regarded as Cupid, may be seen as Renaissance in origin.
The two tragic masks, borrowed from Greek Tragedy, represent the mental state of kenosis, a state of emptiness and self-denial, a requirement for fulfilment by the Divine. They reference the Christian religious expectation of self-denial in the face of Pygmalion’s impending gratification. A clever appropriation of the kenosis paradox. Neoclassical and Medieval.
The painting is Realist in that it depicts an artist in his studio, there are marble chips on the floor, it looks a little shabby. An unquestionably early impressionistic religious sketch hangs on the rough walls above and a Renaissance plaster cast and what may be versions of the Madonna.
Galatea’s marble to flesh interface shows Gerome’s dexterity and academic training as the cold stone moves imperceptibly to warm flesh through a series of subtle temperature shifts. His love for the Academic approach is most obvious here.
The shield looks like a take on the ancient Bocca della Verita, the Mouth of Truth, perhaps representing the central tenet of Realism.

‘Unpacking’ a painting and regarding its context informs and enriches. I no