- Artist
- Jean-Léon Gérôme
- Year
- 1850s
- Medium
- Oil on fabric
- Dimensions
- Framed: 36 x 47 x 5.5 cm (14 3/16 x 18 1/2 x 2 3/16 in.); Unframed: 26.8 x 37 cm (10 9/16 x 14 9/16 in.)
Public Domain
Cleveland Museum of Art
Jean-Léon Gérôme built his reputation on meticulously finished history and Orientalist scenes, so this rare Alpine view stands apart in his output. It records a walking tour through Switzerland undertaken in the 1850s, when the young Academician was still finding his footing before his Salon breakthrough. The unpeopled, topographical precision shows Gérôme adapting his exacting draughtsmanship to landscape, a mode he would rarely revisit as his career narrowed toward the grand machines that made him the most financially successful French painter of his generation.