JEAN-LÉON GÉRÔME

In the 1880s, the celebrated French academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme began a series of animal pictures featuring lions, tigers, and other big game cats.[i]  The impressive number of these works produced over the course of the next two decades establishes them as an important subgenre within the artist’s oeuvre, with both art historical and personal significance.  Among the earliest and most enigmatic of Gérôme’s lion pictures from this period is Les deux majestés (The Two Majesties) of 1883, now at the Milwaukee Art Museum (fig. 1).  The present painting is an oil sketch for this finished work, given by the artist to his daughter four years before his death.