OIL PAINTING: Prayer in a Mosque, 1892
Gerome paintings were anecdotal, painstaking, often melodramatic, and frequently erotic. The surfaces of his paintings were highly finished, and Gerome was fascinated with technical virtuosity. Gerome was a good draftsman in the tight linear style of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and an inventive illustrator in the manner of Delaroche. A trip to Egypt in 1856 introduced an exotic element into his painting, e.g., "Prayer in the Mosque" . During the last 25 years of his life Gerome concentrated on sculpture. As a teacher at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Gerome counted among his many pupils Odilon Redon and the American artists Thomas Eakins and J. Alden Weir. A highly successful artist, Gerome exerted great influence in the Paris art world. He was exceedingly hostile to the Impressionists and, as late as 1893, urged the government to refuse a bequest of 65 of their paintings.