Slave Market
| Support Type: | Canvas |
| Paint Type: | Oil Paint |
| Current Location: | Clark Art Institute |
| Location History: | The artist, sold to Goupil, 23 Aug. 1866, as Un marché d’esclaves; [Goupil, Paris, sold to Gambart, 22 Sept. 1866]¹; [Ernest Gambart, London, 1866, returned to Goupil, Nov. 1866]; [Goupil, Paris, Nov. 1866, sold to Mayer, 27 Jan. 1867, as Marchand d’esclaves];² [Mayer, Dresden, from 1867];³ [Knoedler, Paris, sold to Clark, 1 May 1930, as Marché d’Esclaves]; Robert Sterling Clark (1930–55); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955. 1. Goupil Stock Books, book 3, p. 94, no. 2355. 2. Goupil Stock Books, book 3, p. 119, no. 2598. The buyer is recorded only as “M. Mayer, de Dresde.” Gambart had returned The Slave Market to Goupil in exchange for a second version of Gérôme’s Louis XIV and Molière [A 139; Goupil Stock Books, book 3, p. 119, no. 2597]. See also Gérôme & Goupil: Art and Enterprise, exh. cat., 2000–2001, p. 132, under no. 91. 3. Mayer purchased the painting in Jan. 1867, but since it was shown in the Paris Salon, which opened on 15 April, he may not have taken possession of the work until after its exhibition. This painting has also, erroneously, been catalogued as belonging to the August Belmont collection, but this confuses it with a painting often similarly titled The Slave Market now in the Cincinnati Art Museum [A 217]. |
Jean-Leon Gerome was one of the most impressive 19th century artists. His expertise lay in using a badger brush to make seamlessly perfect art, hiding the painter’s hand and only focusing on the subjects, scene and depiction of it. He often made orientalist painting, often depicting scenes of the Middle East, nude women and ‘the East’ in a exotic manner to European societies. In the center of the painting lies a naked woman who is getting thoroughly checked by a prospective owner of her. This is a depiction of a slave market which did rub independently in those times in the Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Turkey, etc. The girl is pliant and tired, having life-less eyes, and given the condition of other subjects in the background it is not too far-fetched to assume a miserable environment. This is exactly what was getting fed into the French minds, making them feel superior to the strange and depraved societies of the east, specifically Islamic societies. Eakin’s training shows Gerome’s influence on how to differentiate ‘national’ and ‘racial’ types from French academia and Orientalist traditions in front of American subjects. It was exactly this provocative and sensual nature tied to the depravity executed in the form of exoticness that makes the viewers cling to the painting, and its nature.