Jean-Léon Gérôme, whose long and storied career included academic works, Orientalist images, and grand history paintings, was one of the most successful artists in the world in the second half of the nineteenth century. His history paintings considered a wide range of subjects, from ancient times to the Napoleonic era. He occasionally turned to seventeenth-century French history, depicting the elegant court at Versailles, the capital of the Ancien Régime. Gérôme referred to Louis XIV and His Court in the Park of Versailles as “his last important picture” before he exhibited it in Paris at the Salon of 1896. Gérôme’s inspiration for the composition came from a personal experience. He recalled, “One day I was invited to dine at Versailles…and, when lifting my eyes, I caught sight of the château, its summit glittering in the last rays of the setting sun, with all the rest in shadow and, above, the greenish moon! It was striking.” From this contemporary experience, he created a scene of Louis XIV promenading through the gardens with his second wife, Madame de Maintenon.

Although Gérôme conceived of the painting quickly, he laboriously executed it through numerous studies and preparatory drawings, developing each figure in isolation before uniting them on a single canvas. This precise method and rigorous attention to draftsmanship was indebted to his academic training and distinguished him from his Impressionist peers, whose paintings portrayed fleeting instantaneity and were often executed quickly, on location. Because of Gérôme’s more traditional approach to painting, his work was well-received by critics and collectors in his own day. Glimpses of his influence can be seen through the work of his students, including Mary Cassatt, Odilon Redon, and Thomas Eakins.

JEAN-LÉON GÉRÔME
French (1824-1904)
Louis XIV and His Court in the Park of Versailles, 1895
Oil on canvas
32 5/8 x 55 1/4 inches
Gift of Joan J. Cohen and Jerome M. Cohen, 2022.8