Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 – 1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as Academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was arguably the world’s most famous living artist by 1880. The range of his works includes historical paintings, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits, and other subjects.

My first introduction to his work was actually through the reading of a book on cinematography, where his painting Pollice Verso was used by Ridley Scott as a key visual for his film Gladiator. Unfortunately, this piece is not included in this book, although there are several other similar paintings featuring gladiator fights in the Colosseum.

But the book has alot more to offer despite the aforementioned missing piece; the painter’s scope and genre of work covered is incredibly extensive; from epic, wide vista landscapes to much more intimate and close-up portrait subjects. His technical competence is spectacular, his paintings rendered with a sublime quality of heightened realism.

This is a no-nonsense art book with no write-up except for a single page of the artist’s biography as an opening. The very low price of the book is definitely a draw, but the print size is small and the quality of the images is not the greatest, with subtle smudging/softening that look like it was printed with an inkjet printer rather than a professional laser printer.

I’m hoping a much bigger volume will be released by maybe Taschen, Phaidon in the near future that will have bigger and higher quality reproductions of the paintings as well as scholarly material as well, but until such a time, this very affordable book will have to suffice.

“Gerome: 70 Artworks” art book details :

– Dimensions – 8.25 x 0.18 x 8.25 inches
– softcover, 76 pages
– Full color

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