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Dimensions: 57.8 by 45cm., 22¾ by 17¾in.
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Provenance: Goupil & Cie. (by 1868)
Maurice Cottier, Paris (by 1872)
Claude de Bonnechose, née Cottier (by descent from the above)
Hubert de Luze, Paris (by 1993)
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Literature: Oeuvres de J.-L. Gérôme, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, VII, 2
'La Collection Maurice Cottier', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, second series, vol. V, 1872, p. 395
Gerald M. Ackerman, Jean-Léon Gérôme. Monographie révisée. Catalogue raisonné mis à jour, Paris, 2000, pp. 350-351, no. 453, illustrated (titled Ane égyptien)
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Notes: Painted circa 1868.
In 1868 Gérôme asked for leave from his duties at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and embarked on a trip to the Middle East with pupil Paul Lenoir, Léon Bonnat, Albert Goupil, and the journalists Edmond About and Frédéric Masson. The group started from Marseilles on 9 January. After arriving in Alexandria, they went to Cairo. Paul Lenoir recounts how he and Gérôme visited mosque after mosque, sketching, studying, and taking photographs. In Cairo, Gérôme had an audience with the Governor of Egypt, who had received the title of Khedive of Egypt from the Sultan of Constantinople the year before. The ruler must have expressed an interest in Gérôme's work, for, upon returning to Paris, Gérôme sent him an album of photographs of his paintings. The friends spent a whole month in Cairo before hiring a caravan guide to take them further into Egypt.
Among the works inspired by Gérôme's sojourn in Cairo were a series of paintings of donkeys with their masters. Nubian donkeys had been bred and used in Egypt since ancient times and were an integral part of street life. Gérôme, like other western painters (see lot 116), would have been captivated by their striking white colouring and proud bearing compared to European breeds. Works such as the present one amply demonstrate his interest in, and skill at rendering, animals. Camels, horses, lions, tigers, and even domestic dogs are central to Gérôme's oeuvre, setting him apart as one of the most accomplished animalier painters of the nineteenth century.
