View of Medinet El-Fayoum

c. 1868/1870

Jean-Léon Gérôme

Artist, French, 1824 - 1904

About a dozen people walk and a few ride horses across a bridge spanning river that cuts through a sandy landscape in this horizontal painting. A few wisps of clouds drift across a vivid blue sky over the horizon, which comes halfway up the composition. The waterway winds from the lower left corner into the distance parallel to the left edge of the painting. A bank of shrubs and two tall palms lean toward the water from the left bank, and brown and cream-white buildings line both sides of the water to the horizon. People sit on the low wall of the bridge in the lower left corner, and a person leads a donkey laden with sacks toward us on the far side of the deck. The bridge is shaped like a capital T laid down, so the top crossbeam spans the river. The lower branch divides the river on our side of the bridge. Some rocks and a gnarled trunk lie across this strip of land. Farther up the river and to our left, a single person walks across a second bridge made up of planks supported by rocky pilings. That bridge meets the far bank near the remains of a building with pointed arches and a tower-like minaret. Verdant green canopies of a cluster of palm trees flare over this building. People who walk and ride across the bridge create a loose line that extends to a larger gathering beyond the building. The group gathers in the dense shade of a wide-canopied tree, which grows high over a brown wall. More rooflines, including a dome and another minaret, stack along the horizon beyond the tree. The people wear robes and turbans in bright white, aquamarine blue, brick red, and black. The artist signed the painting as if he had written his name on the face of a rock in the lower right corner, “JL GEROME.”

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) was the most publicly honored and financially successful French artist of the second half of the 19th century. His Orientalist scenes were inspired by the many voyages he undertook to Egypt, North Africa, Syria, Asia Minor, and the Holy Land over the course of his career. In View of Medinet El-Fayoum, c. 1868–1870, Gérôme depicts the oldest city in Egypt, located some 80 miles southwest of Cairo. Unlike many Orientalist pictures of the day—fantasies constructed in a Parisian artist's studio—this painting is informed by empirical records, while maintaining a sense of the awe and mystery Egypt inspired in French visitors.

While the Gallery owns a drawing and two prints by Gérôme,View of Medinet El-Fayoum is the first painting by the artist to enter the collection. Purchased with the Chester Dale Fund, it joins a small group of Orientalist pictures in the West Building's recently renovated 19th-century French galleries, including Delacroix's Arabs Skirmishing (1862), Renoir's Odalisque (1870), Benjamin Constant's Favorite of the Emir (1879), and Matisse's Odalisque (1923).

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 81


Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on wood

  • Credit Line

    Chester Dale Fund

  • Dimensions

    overall: 38 × 56 cm (14 15/16 × 22 1/16 in.)

  • Accession

    2013.62.1


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Millard F. Tompkins, Esq.;[1] (sale, American Art Gallery, New York, 5 March 1915, no. 27); Ruppert. private collection, Maryland; (sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 17 October 1956, no. 52). Woodford; P. Tretyakov. Sordoni collection, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.[2] (Mathaf Gallery, London), 1978; sold 1982 to private collection; purchased 14 June 2013 through (Galerie Arnoldi-Livie, Munich) by NGA.
[1] The provenance given here is based on Gerald M. Ackerman, The Life and Work of Jean-Léon Gérôme, with a catalogue raisonné, London, 1986: 228, no. 205.
[2] This is probably the collection of Andrew J. Sordoni [d. 1963], Pennsylvania state senator and founder of the Sordoni Construction Company.

Associated Names

Bibliography

1982

  • Blanch, Lesley. "Art: The Orientalists. Capturing the Glamour of the East." Architectural Digest (March 1982): repro. 161

1983

  • Thornton, Lynne. The Orientalists: Painter-Travellers 1828-1908. Paris, 1983: 116-117, repro.

1986

  • Ackerman, Gerald M. The Life and Work of Jean-Léon Gérôme, with a catalogue raisonné, London, 1986: 228, no. 205.

2013

  • Morton, Mary. "Jean-Léon Gérôme, View of Medinet El-Fayoum." National Gallery of Art Bulletin no. 49 (Fall 2013): 20, repro.

Inscriptions

lower right: JL GEROME

Wikidata ID

Q20188712


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