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Portrait of an Egyptian Fellah

Creator

French Artist · 1824–1904

Despite the discouragement of his goldsmith father, Jean-Léon Gérôme spent a trial period in the studio of a Parisian artist. There he struggled, painting religious cards and selling them on the steps of churches in order to survive. After a few years, he left for Italy. In the late 1840s the French government gave Gérôme a monumental commission to paint the massive *Age of Augustus.* In preparati

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Date: about 1856
Medium: Black chalk
Culture: French
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum

Gérôme made this keenly observed portrait of a fellah (peasant) from life, during the first of several visits he made to Egypt. The drawing served as a study for a painting (now lost) portraying Egyptian farm laborers at work. Later, Gérôme's pupil Charles Bargue included a lithograph after it in their influential teaching manual, Drawing Course (1866 - 1871). The drawing depicted one of only two non-European subjects in the book. In contrast to the Romantic artists Géricault and Delacroix, Gérôme's approach seems dispassionate and documentary. Despite the apparent realism of his drawings, however, they are seldom objective records. Gérôme often used such "authentic" details to construct scenes that appealed to Western fantasies about the East.

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