Solitude

1890

Jean-Léon Gérôme French, 1824-1904

On View

Modern, Level 2, North Wing

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About the Artwork

In this modestly scaled painting, a majestic lion rests on a sandy beach, basking in the warmth of the intense sunlight, away from the elaborate shadows cast by the trees placed outside of the canvas. With relaxed muscles and eyes closed, the wild animal appears to be at ease, organically connected to a landscape of sand, sea, and sky.
Jean-Léon Gérôme applied a limited chromatic scheme to this simple composition, with creamy yellows and whites dominating the foreground, and intense, striated blues in the background. The lion’s anatomy and its tawny coat are painted with Gérôme’s trademark exactitude. The landscape is treated in a more relaxed manner, without the meticulous finish of details. Nonetheless the animal and the environment remain in pictorial harmony thanks to all-encompassing light permeating the surface of the canvas.
Animals always fascinated Gérôme. Early in his career he visited the menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris to make studies and sketches, and later he undertook sketching wild animals during expeditions to the Middle East that he embarked upon from 1856. In Solitude, the artist drew on this firsthand experience to convey his outsider fascination with the desert and its wilderness.

Title Solitude

Artwork Date 1890

Artist Jean-Léon Gérôme

Life Dates 1824-1904

Nationality Please note: Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events. Some definitions include: Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation. French

Culture Please note: Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group. ----------

Medium Oil on canvas

Dimensions Framed: 18 3/8 × 25 1/2 × 3 1/16 inches (46.7 × 64.8 × 7.8 cm) Unframed: 11 3/8 × 18 5/8 inches (28.9 × 47.3 cm)

Classification Paintings

Department European Modern Art to 1970

Credit Bequest of Dexter M. Ferry, Jr.

Accession Number This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection. Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings. For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups. 60.66

Markings

Signed Signed lower left: J. L. Gerome

Provenance

Detroit, Collection Dexter M.Ferry, Jr., by whom bequeathed to the DIA in 1960.

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Exhibition History

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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.

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