The First Kiss of the Sun

Details

JEAN-LÉON GÉROME (FRENCH, 1824-1904)
The First Kiss of the Sun
signed 'J. L. GEROME' (lower right)
oil on linen laid down on board
21¼ x 39 ½ in. (54 x 100.4 cm.)
Painted in 1886.

Provenance

with Boussod Valadon & Cie., Paris, 1886.
Crist Delmonico, New York.
George I. Seney sale; American Art Association, New York, 13 February 1891, lot 246.
P.A.B. Widener, Philadelphia.
with Knoedler and Co., New York.
with Scott & Fowles, New York.
Patrick A. Valentine, Greenwich, Connecticut.
Anonymous sale; Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 18 April 1962, lot 76.
where purchased by Robert Isaacson.
His sale; Christie's, New York, 6 May 1999, lot 9.
Private collection, Connecticut.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 19 June 2003, lot 20, where purchased by the present owner.

Literature

Fanny Field Hering, The Life and Work of Jean-Léon Gérôme, New York, 1892, p. 131-2.
G.M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérome, London, 1986, p. 133, pp. 258 and 259, no. 345 (illustrated p. 133).
Musée Herbert, Album de voyage des artistes en expédition au pays du Levant, Paris, 1993, p. 34.
G.M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérome 2nd ed., London, 2000, p. 316, no. 345 (illustrated pp. 152, 317).
Gerald M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme: Les Orientalistes, vol. 4, Paris, 2000, pp. 316–17, no. 345.
Gérôme and Goupil: Art and Enterprise, exh. cat., Paris, 2000, p. 43.

Exhibited

Poughkeepsie, Vassar College Art Museum, Jean-Léon Gérome and his Pupils, 1967, no. 4.
Greenwich, Connecticut, Bruce Museum, Elegance and Opulence: Art of the Gilded Age, Winter 1999.
Washington, D.C., Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, 8-30 November 2007.
Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Gérôme and the Lure of the Orient, 5 February–20 July 2014.

Special notice

This lot has been imported from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.

Conditions of sale

Brought to you by

Alastair Plumb Specialist, Head of Sale, European Art

aplumb@christies.com +44 (0) 20 7752 3298

Lot Essay

"The most beautifully composed and painted of Gérome's landscapes"

Characterized by Ackerman as "The most beautifully composed and painted of Gérome's landscapes" (G. Ackerman, op. cit., p. 258), The First Kiss of the Sun was painted in 1886, six years after Gérome's last trip to Egypt. The artist first travelled to Egypt in 1856 and made subsequent excursions in 1862, 1868, 1869, 1871, 1874, and 1880. One of the artist's most accomplished landscapes, The First Kiss of the Sun shows the pyramids of Giza suffused in the golden morning light of the desert sun. This view is from the west, as seen from the rising sun illuminating the summit of each pyramid. The ethereal appearance of the distant pyramids contrasts dramatically with the clearly detailed foreground. Moreover, the haze created by the sand and sunlight lends the picture an air of otherworldliness. The head of the Sphinx is just visible in the middle background.

Robert Isaacson enjoyed relating that the strip of clear blue along the top of the picture represents Gérome's memory of a natural phenomenon. Driving to the Cairo airport at dawn, Isaacson saw how the sun struck the particles of sand in the air, forming a distinct horizontal division in the sky.

Throughout his lifetime of travel, Gérome's made frequent drawings, which provided an extensive repertoire of stock images for the paintings he executed in his Paris studio. The critic Theophile Gautier, an early champion of Gérome's work, visited the artist in Paris shortly after he had returned from his first Egyptian trip. Gautier described how the artist made on-site pencil sketches, which would have inspired his work, loaded with abundant visual information. "We should never finish were we to describe the infinite number of details gathered together on these loose sheets: great undulations of ground; masses of doum-palms; saqqhyehs [water wheels] whose wheel lifts and tells the little rosary of pots; cafis; okkels; camping grounds, corner of pyramids..." (G. Ackerman, ibid., p. 45).

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