Qatar Museums has announced a special exhibition to mark the 200^th birth anniversary of the acclaimed French painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904).

The thought-provoking exhibition, called Seeing Is Believing: The Art and Influence of Gérôme, is scheduled to run from November 2 to February 22, 2025,

The exhibition unfolds across three separate yet interconnected sections, each one presenting, questioning or reevaluating Gérôme’s artistic output through different perspectives, artistic mediums and points in time.

The exhibition is organised by the future Lusail Museum in collaboration with Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, which will host the presentation.

Nearly 400 works will be on display at the exhibition, drawing extensively from the future Lusail Museum’s unparalleled collection of Orientalist art, including European depictions of the MENASA region from the 16th to the 19th century.

It also includes significant loans from Qatar Museums’ General Collections and prestigious institutions worldwide such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Islamic Arts Museum, Malaysia.

New works commissioned from artists including Babi Badalov (b. 1959, Azerbaijan) and Nadia Kaabi-Linke (b. 1978, Tunisia) will reinterpret Gérôme for the 21st century.

“Seeing is Believing: The Art and Influence of Gerome fulfils a key mission of our institution: to look at Orientalist paintings with a fresh eye, rooted in the perspective of the MENASA region and to critically analyse their position within the framework of the Orientalist debate and colonial power structure,” said Dr. Julia Gonnella, Director of the future Lusail Museum.

“The presentation of historical works alongside modern and contemporary artists from Mathaf’s collection fosters a deeper understanding of the socio-political implications of Gérôme’s art.

“This comprehensive approach not only highlights his technical mastery but also prompts critical reflections on artistic representation and cultural exchange.

“As we work on our building project, this presentation serves as proof of concept for the Museum’s overarching mission.”

One of the most famous and commercially successful European artists of the 19th century, Gérôme was heralded in his own time as a history painter and a visual storyteller, bringing the worlds of ancient Greece and Rome to life.

Yet it was as a chronicler of the modern cultures and peoples of North Africa and the Middle East that he made his greatest impact.

Travelling repeatedly to Egypt and Turkey and making many other stops in the region between 1855 and 1880, Gérôme created some of Orientalism’s most enduring images and themes. His depictions, at once fancifully imaginative and faithfully naturalistic, played a major role in defining the MENA world for Europe, America and Britain.

Since 1978, his work has been the subject of critical scrutiny by art historians including Linda Nochlin, who famously read his paintings as part of a larger and more disturbing colonial plan.

Seeing Is Believing: The Art and Influence of Gérôme presents new and more wide-ranging interpretations of the artist, without ignoring the contributions of these scholars, or of Edward Said’s groundbreaking book, Orientalism.

The exhibition is curated by Emily Weeks, Guest Curator, Lusail Museum; Giles Hudson, Curator of Photographs, Lusail Museum; and Sara Raza, Guest Curator, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art.

It is organised as a legacy of the Qatar–France 2020 Year of Culture, a year-long programme of collaborations between institutions across both countries.

The exhibition is organised in three sections: 

A Wider Lens, A New Gérôme

Curated by Emily Weeks, this section presents new research and perspectives on the life and work of Gérôme.

It explores his travels throughout the MENA region, how his work fit into the expansion of the French colonial empire, and his understanding of Middle Eastern and North African cultures. It also looks at the development and influence of his artistic techniques, elaborating on his role as a professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts who shaped an estimated 2,000 students over the course of forty years.

Highlights include eleven paintings, one oil sketch and two works on paper by Gérôme from Lusail’s holdings that illustrate the highly polished, illusionistic style for which he became internationally renowned in his lifetime.

Other major artworks include those by Gérôme’s students and contemporaries, such as Frederick Arthur Bridgman and Théodore Ralli, who were part of a large cohort of artists deeply inspired by Gérôme’s central place in the French Salons, which set the standard by which the art of the time was judged.

Thematic case studies will also examine the tension between reality and fiction in Gérôme’s works. Among the works on view will be The Black Bard, which was one of five paintings exhibited by Gérôme at the Royal Academy in London in 1888, captivating nineteenth century audiences with its depiction of a shrouded figure – identified by critics as ‘a Nubian musician’ – staring outward at the viewer.

Another feature exhibit will be Gérôme’s The Whirling Dervish which will be paired with a digital screen, illustrating Lusail Museum’s research into the painting using infrared light technology. This method exposes otherwise invisible features of Gérôme’s work that reveal his painting process.

Between Gérôme and Photography: Truth is stranger than fiction 

Curated by Giles Hudson, this section of the exhibition will present an array of photographs taken in Gérôme’s time, during the decades when the medium was entering into wider use.

Gérôme, who was exceptional among his peers in his respect for photography, relied on it to develop some of his works. Photography also served as an important marketing tool for Gérôme, as a means of replicating his paintings through affordable prints.

Photographs by Gérôme’s contemporaries will reveal the links between painterly and photographic depictions of ‘the East’ while emphasising the tensions between artifice and reality that underlie Orientalism.

The gallery is divided into three sub-sections, which include works by early French photographers in Gérôme’s circle and examples of the use of photography for reproducing artworks; the repertoire of regional photographic images in circulation in the 19th century, with a focus on issues of agency and ‘othering’ of cities and sitters; and the role of colour in creating and countering the idea of Eastern exoticism as encoded by photography.

The gallery will feature approximately 250 works by artists including Girault de Prangey and Pascal Sebah, drawing from Qatar Museums’ own celebrated photography collections, with additional loans coming from Qatar National Library, giving visitors deeper insights into Gérôme’s cultural and artistic milieu.

Among the notable works in the section are Dmitri Ermakov’s Burning blowout of the Caspian Black Sea, which challenges traditional Orientalist narratives by providing a glimpse into the industrial development of the East during the 19th century, and The Pyramids of Dashoor by Francis Frith, which adheres to the artistic ideal of the picturesque through the depiction of a sweeping desert landscape with tiny but carefully placed human figures.

‘I Swear I Saw That’ 

Curated by Sara Raza, this section of the exhibition sets Gérôme’s work and his Orientalist ethos within a contemporary, post-colonial context.

Featuring important holdings from Mathaf’s collection of Arab art as well as newly commissioned works by Babi Badalov and Nadia Kaabi-Linke, this section will bring Gérôme’s complex legacy into the 21st century, suggesting new ways of appreciating the artist without downplaying his work’s roots in colonialism.

Featured artists include Lida Abdul, Farhad Ahrarnia, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Ali Cherri, Inci Eviner, Aikaterini Gegisian, Erbossyn Meldibekov, Umar Rashid and Raeda Saadeh. 

Gérôme’s ideals and imagination, along with the artwork of others of his period, will be put in dialogue with later movements, such as Negritude and Eastern and Soviet Orientalism.

These juxtapositions will highlight how Orientalism can motivate productive debate about old and new power structures and forms of identity, transforming the French artist’s legacy into an opportunity for new perspectives.

Prominent works in the final section include Ergin Çavuşoğlu’s Quintet Without Borders (2006), a five-screen video featuring Roma musicians from Keşan reflecting diverse musical traditions, and Jewad Selim’s A Portrait of Lorna Selim (1948), which subverts stereotypical visual tropes of traditional Orientalist paintings.

The exhibition is designed by Duncan McCauley Studio (Berlin). 

Publication

Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated catalogue that will include new research on the artist and essays on his impact, by the curators as well as Christine Peltre, specialist in Orientalist painting and professor of art history at the University Marc Bloch of Strasbourg. 

Programmes

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Lusail Museum will offer talks as part of a vibrant public programme.

GO: Visit www.qm.org.qa for more information.