Character Symbolising Turkey shows a gracefully posed full-length female figure in profile. She is dressed in traditional nineteenth century Turkish costume, and in her right hand she holds an elongated curved single-edge Ottoman sword, whilst her left arm rests causally on her hip. She wears a flowing white kaftan with green detailing appearing along the seams. Around her waist an embroidered, fringed kilt is gathered and tied, while a red cloak hangs jauntily from her right shoulder, pinned in place by a floral broach. Her hair is swept up into a bulbous white turban, a branch of leaves encircling the headwear.
The work makes reference, both in its title and neo-Classical composition, to the iconography of Tyche popular in classical art from the Greek and Roman periods. A Tyche was the patron, or tutelary deity who governed the prosperity and the fortune of a city, and was portrayed figuratively as representing the city itself. During the Hellenistic period, Tyche appeared on many coins in profile and the tradition continued into medieval art where she was depicted holding a cornucopia, emblematic ship’s rudder or wheel of fortune. Gérôme, who was fascinated by classical mythology and art, was evidently aware of this iconographical device and perhaps produced Character Symbolising Turkey as a gift for ‘Mr Ebleman’ where Turkey is personified in the form of a beautiful, elegant woman.
Jean Leon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor with a varied oeuvre, but whose style is referred to as Academicism. The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek and Roman mythology, Orientalism, portraits and other subjects bringing the Academic painting tradition to an artistic climax. He was a pupil of the Academic painters Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) and Charles Gleyre (1808-1874) and additionally studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
In 1853, thanks to a considerable down payment for a commission, he was able to travel to Constantinople and from 1855 he frequently travelled to Turkey and Asia Minor making numerous preparatory sketches and paintings during his visits. In 1856 he visited Egypt for the first time, which would herald the start of many orientalist paintings depicting Arab religion, genre scenes and North African landscapes. His Egyptian genre scenes won him great acclaim, including the admiration of the influential
French critic Theophile Gautier. In 1869 Gérôme was elected as an honorary member of the Royal Academy, and in 1870 he stayed in London completing a series of oriental bath scenes that usually incorporated two or more nudes in imagined baths within fantasy rooms full of coloured tiles, fountains and steam penetrated by light beams. He made his debut as a sculptor in 1878, with a bronze group, the Gladiators (Paris, Musee d'Orsay). Gérôme had numerous students throughout his life, notably including the Russian battle painter Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin (1842-1904), the American artist Kenyan Cox (1856-1919) and the British Impressionist Wynford Dewhurst, RBA (1864-1941).
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Gerome was a French painter and sculptor, a specialist in highly detailed and archaeologically precise scenes of daily life from ancient Greece and Rome, in oriental subjects, and in historical tableaux set in the Baroque era. A pupil of Delaroche, and of Charles Gleyre, from 1855 he travelled regularly in Turkey, Egypt, and Asia Minor. His Egyptian genre scenes won him the admiration of Gautier, and The Prisoner (1861; Nantes, Musee des Beaux-Arts) became one of the most famous 19th-century pictures. His Death of Caesar (1859; Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery) carefully recreates the past, suggesting, with a cool and polished surface, Rome's marmoreal splendour, while L'Éminence grise (1874; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts), set in the world of Cardinal Richelieu, is a Baroque costume drama, painted in a delicate range of powdery blues and salmon pinks. In 1870 Gérôme was in London, where he began a series of oriental bath scenes. He made his debut as a sculptor in 1878, with a bronze group, the Gladiators (Paris, Musee d'Orsay).
Collections
Gerome is represented in the following collections: Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota; Musée d'Orsay, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; National Gallery, London; Réunion des Musées Nationaux, France; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, UK; Ball State Museum of Art, Indiana; Canton Museum of Art, Ohio; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts; Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Courtauld Institute of Art, London; Dahesh Museum, New York City; Davison Art Center at Wesleyan University, Connecticut; Haggin Museum, California; Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington; Joslyn Art Museum, Nebraska; Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, New York; Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; Montana Museum of Art and Culture, Missoula; Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, France; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, France; Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design; National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri; Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas; The Wallace Collection, London; The Walters Art Museum, Maryland, amongst others.
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