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Chariot Race
Jean Léon Gérôme (French, 1824–1904)
1876
- Medium
- Oil on cradled panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 86.3 × 156 cm (34 × 61 7/16 in.); Framed: 108.6 × 174 cm (42 3/4 × 68 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- George F. Harding Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Jean-Léon Gérôme claimed that he based this almost cinematic depiction of a chariot race at the Circus Maximus stadium in Rome on archaeological research. The painting was first acquired by New York department store magnate A. T. Stewart, reflecting the popularity of Gérôme’s slickly finished and often dramatic work among wealthy American collectors in the 19th century. Its arrival in the United States made headlines and was reported by young writer Henry James, who described it as “a fierce mêlée of beasts, men, and wheels; the struggle and confusion are powerfully expressed, and the horses and chariots painted with that hard, consummate finish characteristic of the author.”
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
