| Woman at a Balcony |
Artist:Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, Vesoul 1824–1904 Paris)
Date:1887–88
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:19 3/4 × 16 3/8 in. (50.2 × 41.6 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Gift of Kenneth Jay Lane, 2015
Accession Number:2015.282
Not on view
Seen from below as if from street level and posed seductively in a revealing costume, this woman is identifiable as an alma, or courtesan. The setting recalls Cairo, which Gérôme visited for the last time in 1868, some twenty years before he painted the picture.
Catalogue Entry
Gérôme was celebrated for meticulously detailed paintings evocative of scenes observed during his travels in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, which he visited six times between 1856 and 1880. His extraordinary facility at rendering varied textures is in full evidence in this picture, particularly in the woman's face seen through the green veil and her contrasting sheer black blouse. No less impressive is the careful handling of the latticework window screen, known in Arabic as a mashrabiyya (or mashrabiya).
Seen from below as if from street level and posed seductively in a revealing costume, this woman is identifiable as an alma, or courtesan. The same model is seen in a contemporary painting of 1887, The Rose (The Love Token), in which a woman at a balcony is shown as part of a street scene complete with a horse and rider and a pair of hounds (Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, New York; Ackerman no. 351). Gérôme had depicted the same blouse in two paintings of 1882, Woman of Cairo and An Almeh (sic), the former including the veil and the latter including the necklace of gold coins (both whereabouts unknown; Ackerman nos. 308 and 309).
Asher Ethan Miller 2015
Copyright Image
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