
Peter Rees
Director, Head of Sales
Sold for £14,000 inc. premium
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Provenance
Galerie de Bayser, Paris, selling exhibition, Jean-Léon Gerome, 15 March- 2 April 1977, no. 42.
Richard Day Ltd., London.
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1979.
Literature
Gerald M. Ackerman, The Life and Work of Jean-Léon Gérôme, with a catalogue raisonné, Paris, 1986, p. 214, no. 148.
The present lot is a preparatory sketch (one of many known) for one of Gerome's most important paintings, completed in 1864. The work was officially commissioned by the Ministère d'Etat in commemoration of the reception of the ambassadors of the king of Siam, Rama IV, by Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie in the great Salle de Bal in the Château de Fontainebleau, 27 June 1861. Gérôme took three years to complete the large canvas, which is now in the collection of Musée National de l'Histoire de France, Chateau de Versailles (see fig. 1).