The Muezzin
Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824–1904)

Title

The Muezzin

Artist

Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824–1904)

Date

1865

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

32 × 25 1/2 in. (81.3 × 64.8 cm)

Classification

Painting

Credit Line

Bequest of Francis T. B. Martin

Object Number

1995.37

On View

On view

Provenance

Purchased from the artist by Goupil & Cie, Paris, by March 1856, stock book no. 1612, as Muetzine en prière;
Purchased from Goupil & Cie by Ernest Gambart & Co., London, April 1865;
Purchased from Ernest Gambart & Co. by Henry Van Rensselaer Kennedy (1863–1912), New York, 1886–1912;
Inherited by his wife, Marian Van Rensselaer Kennedy (née Robbins, 1862–1946), New York, 1912–April 26, 1928;
Purchased at her sale, XIX Century Paintings by French, English & American Artists from the Private Collections of Mrs. H. Van Rensselaer Kennedy, New York City and Mr. Frederick H. Gottlieb, Baltimore, Maryland with Some Additions, American Art Association, New York, April 26, 1928, lot 77, through J. Laurie Wallace, by Charles W. Martin (1863–1944), Omaha, 1928–November 27, 1940;
His gift to his nephew, Francis T. B. Martin (1904–1995), Omaha, November 27, 1940–November 5, 1995;
Bequeathed by Martin to Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, 1995.

Exhibition History

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), Dayton Art Institute, November 10–December 30, 1972; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, January 26–March 11, 1973; Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, April 6–May 20, 1973.

Stories of a Collection, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, August 28–October 3, 1999.

Gérôme and Goupil: Art and Enterprise, Musée Goupil, Bordeaux, October 12, 2000–January 14, 2001; Dahesh Museum of Art, New York, February 6–May 5, 2001; Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, June 7–August 12, 2001.

The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, June 15–September 12, 2010; Musée d’Orsay, Paris, October 19, 2010–January 23, 2011; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, February 15–May 22, 2011, no. 145.

Titian to Monet: European Paintings from Joslyn Art Museum, Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA, October 14, 2022-January 8, 2023; Rembrandt to Monet: 500 Years of European Painting from Joslyn Art Museum, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, February 22–May 28, 2023.

Published References

Edward Strahan [Earl Shinn], Gérôme: A Collection of the Works of J. L. Gérôme in One Hundred Photogravures (New York: Samuel L. Hall, 1881), vol. 1, n.p.

Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1886), vol. 2, 219, as Call to Prayer.

C. H. Stranahan, A History of French Painting (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1888), 319.

Clara Erskine Clement and Laurence Hutton, Artists of the Nineteenth Century and Their Works (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1889), vol., 290.

Fanny Field Hering, Gérôme: The Life and Works of Jean-Léon Gérôme (New York: Cassell Publishing Co., 1892), 242.

Gustave Haller, Nos Grande Peintres (Paris: Goupil & Cie, 1899), 103.

Gerald M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), exh. cat. (Dayton: Dayton Art Institute, 1972), 24.

Albert Boime, “Gérôme and the Bourgeois Artist’s Burden,” Arts Magazine vol. 57, no. 5 (January 1983), 71.

Gerald M. Ackerman, The Life and Work of Jean-Léon Gérôme, with a Catalogue Raisonné (New York and London: Sotheby’s, 1986), 66, 218–19, no. 163, (repro.).

C. Williams, “Jean-Léon Gérôme: A Case Sudy of an Orientalist Painter,” in Fantasy or Ethnography? Irony and Conclusion in Subaltern Representation, eds. Sabra J. Webber and Margaret R. Lynd (Columbus, Ohio: Division of Comparative Studies in the Humanities, Ohio State University, 1996), 121, 123, (repro.).

Gerald M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme: His Life, His Work, 1824–1904 (Courbevoie: ACR Édition, 1997), 69, (repro.).

Gerald M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme: monographie revisée, catalogue raisonné mis à jour (Courbevoie: ACR Édition, 2000), 67, 260–61 (repro.).

Hélène Lafont-Couturier, Gérôme and Goupil: Art and Enterprise, exh. cat., trans. Isabel Ollivier (Bordeaux: Musée Goupil, 2000), 23, 25, 119, 154, (repro.).

Sahara K. Davies, The Orientalists: Western Artists in Arabia, the Sahara, Persia and India (New York: Laynfaroh, 2005), 271.

Laurence des Cars, Dominique de Font-Réaulx, and Edouard Papet, The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), exh. cat. (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010), 176, 178, 244–45, 260, (repro.).

Taylor J. Acosta, European Paintings and Sculpture from Joslyn Art Museum (Omaha: Joslyn Art Museum, 2020), 158–59, (repro.).