The French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), best known for his Orientalist paintings, enjoyed great commercial and official success in the second half of the nineteenth century. He was particularly renowned as an ethnographer, making several extended trips to the Middle East and recording local costume, architecture and mores with meticulous detail. Despite the apparent realism of his works, however, they are seldom objective records. Gérôme often used such ‘authentic’ details to construct scenes that appealed to Western fantasies about the East.

The present work, which depicts an Egyptian man smoking a clay pipe, is one of a small number of prints Gérôme made over the course of his career; an impression was published as a hors-texte illustration to an article about the artist in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1868. In its high degree of detail it is typical of the artist’s style and approach, but as an etching, it is quite unusual: Gérôme only produced four etchings over the course of his career. The etching was published in two editions, the first a small edition on China paper printed in 1865, and the second, larger edition, to which the present impression belongs, published in 1868 on laid paper.

Arsène Bonafous-Murat, Paris (1935-2011); from whom purchased by Donato Esposito, September 2005; Gift of Donato Esposito in memory of Professor John House, 2012

Bibliotheque Nationale, Departement des Estampes, Inventaire du Fonds Francais, apres 1800 (IFF), Paris 1930-1967
cat. no. 3
p. 63
1955, vol. 9

Les graveurs du XIXe siècle, guide de l'amateur d'estampes modernes (12 vols)
Vol. 1

É. Galichon, ‘M. Gérôme: Peintre ethnographe’, in Gazette des Beaux-Arts 24 (February 1868), pp.147-51
opposite p. 148

Inscription: inscription : printed : within image & recto : : J.S. Gérôme

Inscription: inscription : handwritten in pencil : lower right corner & recto : : V-te,

Inscription: inscription : handwritten in pencil : lower right corner & verso : : 526063