Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824-1904)
Property from the Collection of Nancy Richardson
Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824-1904)

Ils conspirent

Details
Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824-1904)
Ils conspirent
signed 'J.L. GEROME' (center right)
oil on canvas
26 x 36 in. (66 x 91.4 cm.)
Painted in 1892.
Provenance
The artist.
with Goupil & Cie., acquired directly from the above, 5 May 1892.
Paul Louis Bouchard (1853 – 1937), Paris, acquired directly from the above, 5 May 1903.
Anonymous sale; Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 30 June 1971, lot 114.
with Gallery Maurice Sternberg, Chicago.
Forbes Magazine Collection, New York.
Their sale; Sotheby's, New York, 13 October 1993, lot 134.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.
Literature
Oeuvres de J. L. Gérôme, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, XII, no. 5.
G. M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Monographie revisée et catalogue raisonné mis à jour (Les Orientalistes, vol. 4), Paris, 2000, p. 334-335, no. 407, illustrated p. 335, as Ils conspirent (première version).
Exhibited
Dayton, The Dayton Art Institute, Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), 10 November - 30 December 1972, also Minneapolis, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 26 January - 11 March 1973 and Baltimore, The Walters Art Gallery, 6 April - 20 May 1973, no. 40, p. 92.

Lot Essay

Ils conspirent is among the most enigmatic paintings from the oeuvre of Jean-Léon Gérôme. A simple, minimalist composition which shrouds both the setting and central figures in darkness, the dramatic tension of the work is created by the artist’s striking use of chiaroscuro. The three conspirators huddle close around their small table, clearly fearful of being overheard even in the otherwise empty room. The only light in the composition emanates from a single light source on their table, hidden from view. The men are so tightly grouped together that only a tiny sliver of light escapes this gathering, playing diagonally across the tiled floor in the foreground toward the viewer. In the background, the light illuminates the corner of the room that the men have gathered in, creating dramatic shadows which emanate from both the figures and their discarded top hats – one hung on the wall above them and the other placed on another table at left – which are perhaps meant to evoke the shadowy threats which lurk just outside of this trusted group of compatriots.
Professor Gerald Ackerman draws comparisons between this work and Rembrandt’s The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis (1661–62, Nationalmuseum Stockholm, fig. 1) and Géricault’s Le repas des conjures avant l’assassinat de Fualdès (1817, Private collection), which also depict groups of conspirators gathered together around a table. Ils conspirent, however, is differentiated from these earlier works by Gérôme’s decision to place the main figural group off center, creating a spatial void in the center of the composition instead, which was a favorite trope used by Gérôme for history paintings. The austerity of the composition creates a sense of jittery dramatic tension amongst the figures in contrast to the bolder, almost heroic mood created in the compositions of Rembrandt and Géricault. Laurence Des Cars, in the exhibition catalogue for The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (2010), instead draws a comparison between this subject, which Gérôme treated in at least one other finished composition (exhibited at the Salon of 1892) and an oil sketch, and a scene in Victor Hugo’s Quatrevingt-treize (1874), the author’s last novel. Set amidst the extreme violence of La Terreur, which began in 1793, Des Cars argues that Ils conspirent could be a reference to the scene in the novel in which the revolutionaries Danton, Robespierre and Marat gather together in a cabaret in Paris.
We are grateful to Graydon Parrish for confirming the authenticity of this work.

(fig. 1) Rembrandt Harmenz. van Rijn, The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, 1661-62. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

More from 19th Century European Art

View All
View All