Jean-Léon Gérôme - “Lion Snapping at a Butterfly”

Lion Snapping at a Butterfly, oil on canvas by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1889; in the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pa. 60 × 83 cm. (click photo for larger image)French artist and École des Beaux-Arts teacher, Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), was one of the great Academic Classicists of the 19th century. Among his pupils were the great Symbolist, Odilon Redon and the American masters, Thomas Eakins and J. Alden Weir. Academic Classicism (also known as Academic Art) refers to the painting style that was established by academic academies and universities. Based on the standards set by such artists as the Renaissance master, Raphael, Academic Classicism held a particularly strong influence in France, at a time when Paris was a large center of the art world. It was this style of art that the avant-garde movements such as Impressionism and Post-Impressionism reacted against. These latter movements opened the door to Modern Art--and Academic Classicism has thus long been underrated and far less addressed in scholarship. Visionary artists felt that it was imposing, restrictive, and that it didn’t address the issues of a changing world. Nevertheless, some of the world’s greatest artists were practitioners of Academic Classicism. They are definitely worth our consideration. Jean-Léon Gérôme was an artist who railed against what he saw as the upstart avant-garde artists, and fiercely argued for banning their works. In his day, he was certainly a “lion snapping at a butterfly”!