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| Pygmalion and Galatea |
Artist:Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, Vesoul 1824–1904 Paris)
Date:ca. 1890
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:35 x 27 in. (88.9 x 68.6 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Gift of Louis C. Raegner, 1927
Accession Number:27.200
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 800
Between 1890 and 1892, Gérôme made both painted and sculpted variations on the theme of Pygmalion and Galatea, the tale recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. All depict the moment when the sculpture of Galatea was brought to life by the goddess Venus, in fulfillment of Pygmalion’s wish for a wife as beautiful as the sculpture he created. This is one of three known versions in oil that are closely related to a polychrome marble sculpture, also fashioned by Gérôme (Hearst Castle, San Simeon, Calif.). In each of the paintings, the sculpture appears at a different angle, as though it was being viewed in the round.
Catalogue Entry
Between 1890 and 1892, Gérôme made both painted and sculpted variations on the theme of Pygmalion and Galatea, the tale recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book X, lines 243–97). All depict the moment when the sculpture of Galatea was brought to life by the goddess Venus, in fulfillment of Pygmalion’s wish for a wife as beautiful as the sculpture he created. Gérôme’s correspondence with his biographer Fanny Field Hering (see References) provides information about the origins of the present work. In 1890, the artist remarked that he had begun painting the subject, which he thought very hackneyed, in an attempt to rejuvenate it. In November 1890, he mentioned Pygmalion and Galatea among several works that he had painted the prior summer, which were nearly finished.
In January 1891, Gérôme wrote to Hering that he would soon sculpt a marble version of this subject; it has been suggested that he based the marble sculpture on a plaster original that had served as the model for the earlier painted versions (Ackerman 1986, 2000). Gérôme sold the present work to his dealer Boussod, Valadon on March 22, 1892; the firm sold it to Chicago collector Charles Tyson Yerkes early the following month, on April 7. The marble (Hearst Castle, San Simeon, California) was completed in 1892 and exhibited at the Paris Salon that year; originally polychromed, it has lost its color.
In each of the paintings, the sculpture appears at a different angle, as though it was being viewed in the round. There are two known painted versions of this subject showing Galatea frontally (both in private collections; Ackerman 2000, nos. 388 and 388.2, as 1890). A third version shows Galatea at a diagonal (presumed lost; Ackerman no. 386, as ca. 1892). A fourth version, identifiable in a photograph of Gérôme's studio, has been described as representing Galatea "seen fully en face" (presumed lost; Ackerman no. 387, as ca. 1892). Gérôme also painted a "reduction" of the present composition (whereabouts unknown), which he sold to Boussod, Valadon on May 5, 1892, two months after the MMA painting; they sold it to the Czar of Russia on September 24, 1892 (dealer stock no. 22251; see Lafont-Couturier 2000; not in Ackerman).
Our painting appears on the back wall of Gérôme's studio in The Artist's Model (1892; Haggin Museum, Stockton, California; Ackerman no. 419). A later version of The Artist's Model (1895; Dahesh Museum of Art, New York; Ackerman no. 419.3) shows a different version of Pygmalion and Galatea (Ackerman no. 388) in the background.
Asher Ethan Miller 2016
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