Lot Essay
During the second half of the 19th Century, Jean-Lon Grme was one of the most famous and influential academic painters in the world. The son of a prosperous goldsmith, he received a classical education with a strong emphasis on Greek, Latin and history at the local college of his native city of Vesoul in eastern France. His love for the romanticised classical world is witnessed in his early paintings, depicting scenes of antique Greece and Rome. While Grme's colleagues- Boulanger, Hamon, Picou- lived off the neo-Greek style for the rest of their lives, Grme changed to a more serious, less obviously commercial approach. After a trip to the Balkans in 1853, he began his distinguished career as an ethnographical painter and from 1856 he sent Orientalist pictures to the Salon as well as historical paintings, society portraits and genre scenes. He found the subject matters of his dramatic Orientalists paintings in the course of his numerous travels to Turkey, Egypt and Palestine, instilling the same passion for exploring the East in his pupils at the Parisian cole des Beaux-Arts, where he taught for nearly forty years. As a result, many of his students were to become Orientalists: Jean Lecomte du Noy, the Turks Osman Hamdy Bey and Khalil Bey, as well as the Americans Frederick Arthur Bridgman and Edwin Lord Weeks.
In 1857, on the eve of his departure for his first trip to Egypt and Asia Minor, where he travelled with the writer Emile Augier and the sculptor Auguste Bartholdi, Grme wrote in his journal: 'Dpart pour l'Egypte. Mon court sjour Constantinople m'avais mis en apptit, et l'Orient tait le plus frquent de mes rves. Probablemente parmi mes anctres s'est gliss quelque Bohmien, cas j'ai toujours eu l'humeur nomade et la bosse de la locomotion. Je pars avec des amis, moi cinquime, tous assez lgers d'argent, mais pleins d'entrain...Nos louons un cange et peignant, de Damiette Philae. Nous revenons au Caire o nous demeurons quatre autres mois dans une des maisons de Soliman Pacha qu'il nous avait loue...Heureuse poque de la jeunesse, de l'insouciance et l'avenir devant nous. Beaucoup de tableaux, plus ou moins rssis, plus ou moins gots du public, furnnt xcuts la suite de ce sjour au bord du Pre des Fleuves' (J.-L. Grome, Notes published in The Bulletin de la Socit d'agriculture, lettres, sciences et arts de la Haute-Saone, 1980, p.11).
Corps de garde d'arnautes au Caire was among the works painted from the sketches Grme executed Cairo during this first trip. A particularly observant man, the artist had a very sharp eye for the differences in people's features and costumes, and was deeply fascinated by the extrodinary ethnic diversity in the Ottoman Empire. The Arnauts (Albanian soldiers in the Ottoman army) were among the artist's favorite subjects, due to the bright chromatic richness of their traditional costume. Grme's exceptional skills in depictiong the soldiers was praised in The Art Journal (op. cit.), were Corps de garde d'arnautes au Caire was illustrated in the sophisticated engraving by P. Rajon: 'The national dress is extremely picturesque, and espescially so is that of the men when equipped in the accompanying print, with the heavy turban, embroidered white frock or surtout, and long ornamented pistols stuck in the gray sash or scarf... The two figures in the foreground are posed with considerable ease and elegance, and the whole comosition is very effectively arranged'.
In 1857, on the eve of his departure for his first trip to Egypt and Asia Minor, where he travelled with the writer Emile Augier and the sculptor Auguste Bartholdi, Grme wrote in his journal: 'Dpart pour l'Egypte. Mon court sjour Constantinople m'avais mis en apptit, et l'Orient tait le plus frquent de mes rves. Probablemente parmi mes anctres s'est gliss quelque Bohmien, cas j'ai toujours eu l'humeur nomade et la bosse de la locomotion. Je pars avec des amis, moi cinquime, tous assez lgers d'argent, mais pleins d'entrain...Nos louons un cange et peignant, de Damiette Philae. Nous revenons au Caire o nous demeurons quatre autres mois dans une des maisons de Soliman Pacha qu'il nous avait loue...Heureuse poque de la jeunesse, de l'insouciance et l'avenir devant nous. Beaucoup de tableaux, plus ou moins rssis, plus ou moins gots du public, furnnt xcuts la suite de ce sjour au bord du Pre des Fleuves' (J.-L. Grome, Notes published in The Bulletin de la Socit d'agriculture, lettres, sciences et arts de la Haute-Saone, 1980, p.11).
Corps de garde d'arnautes au Caire was among the works painted from the sketches Grme executed Cairo during this first trip. A particularly observant man, the artist had a very sharp eye for the differences in people's features and costumes, and was deeply fascinated by the extrodinary ethnic diversity in the Ottoman Empire. The Arnauts (Albanian soldiers in the Ottoman army) were among the artist's favorite subjects, due to the bright chromatic richness of their traditional costume. Grme's exceptional skills in depictiong the soldiers was praised in The Art Journal (op. cit.), were Corps de garde d'arnautes au Caire was illustrated in the sophisticated engraving by P. Rajon: 'The national dress is extremely picturesque, and espescially so is that of the men when equipped in the accompanying print, with the heavy turban, embroidered white frock or surtout, and long ornamented pistols stuck in the gray sash or scarf... The two figures in the foreground are posed with considerable ease and elegance, and the whole comosition is very effectively arranged'.