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Lot Essay
Les Pigeons shows a group of ladies guarded by a eunnuch in front of the Hall of Divan, located in the first courtyard of the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul. The meeting point for Divan -- the sultan's body of governing ministers -- the hall must be passed in order to reach the harem entrance located further back in the palace's second courtyard.
Of the present work Professor Gerald Ackerman writes:
"Often reproduced, Les pigeons is one of the most popular of Gérôme's paintings. The peaceful charm of the scene highlights how serious, even severe, Gérôme's subjects usually are. A group of upper class ladies, a harem, is guarded by an elegantly costumed black eunuch. While one of their group scatters feed for some pigeons, they stand and watch patiently. As the pigeons scrabble for food, the birds form a jumbling mass that blots out a section of the porch. The descent of the second group of pigeons dropping from the sky and the porch rafters is a remarkable display on Gérôme's part of his mastery of the sense of flight, of gravity, and the changes of value from sunlight to shadow. Compositionally it is astounding too, for the bright colours of the heavy, full cloaks of the ladies and the eunuch - garments that make them earth-bound - balance the brightness of the airborne flutter between the brightly lit columns to the right. The shaded space of the porch into which they fly and land is practically palpable.
The birds are so well observed that one is tempted to suspect the aid of photography - no sin in the late nineteenth century - but photographs are never that good. Perhaps Gérôme had several splendid well-posed taxidermic specimens which he sketched in various positions and then arranged with a sureness of spatial relationships. Even so, it is ultimately Gérôme's skill as an observer and a draughtsman to which we owe this thrillingly convincing airborne flock.
Gérôme here is echoing the wondrous portrayals of happy excursions of upper-class harem ladies of Istanbul, a long joyful series that had been instigated and continued by his friend the Italian painter Alberto Pasini (1826-1899). Gérôme, like Pasini, was attracted by the mirthful sense of enjoyment of these ladies - sequestered even in public by guards and blanketing costumery of brightly coloured robes. Pasini painted a similar composition to the present work (fig 1), with which it is quite possible that Gérôme was familiar.
Practically the same age, Gérôme and Pasini were travel companions. In 1879 and 1883 they went together to Spain. Gérôme, who was an irrepressible traveller, did not visit Turkey as regularly as he did Egypt and the Holy Land, nor often as Pasini, whose name is linked with Istanbul. For the most part Gérôme specialized in scenes of Cairo and its contingent deserts. Just a small number of his paintings can be located in Turkey and its capital. The subject of Les pigeons may have been inspired by an incident Gérôme has witnessed in Istanbul, but it is spiced by his memory of the work of his friend, and is, more or less, a homage to Pasini."
We would like to thank Professor Gerald M. Ackerman for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
Of the present work Professor Gerald Ackerman writes:
"Often reproduced, Les pigeons is one of the most popular of Gérôme's paintings. The peaceful charm of the scene highlights how serious, even severe, Gérôme's subjects usually are. A group of upper class ladies, a harem, is guarded by an elegantly costumed black eunuch. While one of their group scatters feed for some pigeons, they stand and watch patiently. As the pigeons scrabble for food, the birds form a jumbling mass that blots out a section of the porch. The descent of the second group of pigeons dropping from the sky and the porch rafters is a remarkable display on Gérôme's part of his mastery of the sense of flight, of gravity, and the changes of value from sunlight to shadow. Compositionally it is astounding too, for the bright colours of the heavy, full cloaks of the ladies and the eunuch - garments that make them earth-bound - balance the brightness of the airborne flutter between the brightly lit columns to the right. The shaded space of the porch into which they fly and land is practically palpable.
The birds are so well observed that one is tempted to suspect the aid of photography - no sin in the late nineteenth century - but photographs are never that good. Perhaps Gérôme had several splendid well-posed taxidermic specimens which he sketched in various positions and then arranged with a sureness of spatial relationships. Even so, it is ultimately Gérôme's skill as an observer and a draughtsman to which we owe this thrillingly convincing airborne flock.
Gérôme here is echoing the wondrous portrayals of happy excursions of upper-class harem ladies of Istanbul, a long joyful series that had been instigated and continued by his friend the Italian painter Alberto Pasini (1826-1899). Gérôme, like Pasini, was attracted by the mirthful sense of enjoyment of these ladies - sequestered even in public by guards and blanketing costumery of brightly coloured robes. Pasini painted a similar composition to the present work (fig 1), with which it is quite possible that Gérôme was familiar.
Practically the same age, Gérôme and Pasini were travel companions. In 1879 and 1883 they went together to Spain. Gérôme, who was an irrepressible traveller, did not visit Turkey as regularly as he did Egypt and the Holy Land, nor often as Pasini, whose name is linked with Istanbul. For the most part Gérôme specialized in scenes of Cairo and its contingent deserts. Just a small number of his paintings can be located in Turkey and its capital. The subject of Les pigeons may have been inspired by an incident Gérôme has witnessed in Istanbul, but it is spiced by his memory of the work of his friend, and is, more or less, a homage to Pasini."
We would like to thank Professor Gerald M. Ackerman for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.