Study of Palm Trees

As this study attests, Gérôme’s characteristic attention to surface detail and texture was not limited to paintings produced in his studio. Shepherd Gallery (1985) plausibly linked it to a group of nine landscape studies, all on canvas, painted in 1868, during the artist’s third visit to Egypt (Musée Georges Garret, Vesoul, 945.2.20, 1–9; see Gilles Cugnier in Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1824–1904, peintre, sculpteur et graveur: ses oeuvres conservées dans les collections françaises publiques et privées, Vesoul, 1981, pp. 138–39, nos. 169–77). Here the artist employed clusters of straight strokes to define the palm fronds, employing a narrow range of greens and ochre to contrast sunstruck highlights with discrete areas cast in shade. This is a rare oil study by Gérôme that can be linked to a finished work: the motif was adapted for the background of an undated late painting, Caravan (whereabouts unkown; see Gerald M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme: Monographie révisée, catalogue raisonné mis à jour, rev. ed., Paris, 2000, no. 546).

Asher Ethan Miller 2015

[Galerie Martin du Nord, Paris, until 1984; sold to Shepherd]; [Shepherd Gallery, New York, 1984–85; sold to Lane]; Kenneth Jay Lane, New York (1985–2015)

New York. Shepherd Gallery. "French Nineteenth Century Paintings, Drawings, Pastels, Watercolors and Oil Sketches: Recent Acquisitions, Winter Exhibition, 1985," February 13–March 31, 1985, no. 91 (as "Palm Trees in the Mid-East").

French Nineteenth Century Paintings, Drawings, Pastels, Watercolors and Oil Sketches: Recent Acquisitions, Winter Exhibition, 1985. Exh. cat., Shepherd Gallery. New York, 1985, unpaginated, no. 91, ill., dates it about 1868, noting that similar landscape studies painted during Gérôme's final trip to Egypt that year are in the Musée Georges Garret, Vesoul.