Acquisition · Child with a Mask by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Child with a Mask is a very unusual painting in the body of work produced by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904). It is still highly enigmatic in many respects – including its subject, the sitter’s identity, its exact date and the context in which it was created – and continues to exert a powerful fascination. The work is in tondo format and depicts the bust and face of a young child, whose eyes are fixed upon the beholder. Set against a dark blue-green background, the child is wearing a loose-fitting emerald green garment draped across his shoulders and has a light brown mask with snakes and long vermillion hair on top of his head, held there by a thin cord. He’s holding the hilt and crossguard of what appears to be a little wooden sword in his left hand.

Could this be the Greek hero Perseus after he’s cut off Medusa’s head with his sword? Might the mask’s red hair be a reference to the blood shed by the monster with the petrifying eyes? More than an actual mythological figure or a portrait “en travesti”, as had been fashionable in the 18^th century, Gérôme, rather more simply, shows us a child at play, using a few toys to give free rein to his imagination. The small boy’s serious eyes, the simplicity of the mise en scène, and the contrast between the mask’s furious expression and the child’s placidity make the painting nothing less than a meditation on our capacity for belief in myths and on the innocence of childhood.

The canvas, which is unsigned and was never exhibited during the artist’s lifetime (and is possibly an unfinished work) long remained largely unknown. The artist gave it to Blanche Goupil, his wife Marie’s sister, and it was handed down in the family for several generations before appearing on the art market in the 1990s. Seldom exhibited – one exception being the major Gérôme retrospective exhibition held by Musée d’Orsay in 2010 – and not much studied, further research needs to be carried out on the canvas, in particular with a view to identifying the sitter. As it was painted between 1840 and 1856, he can’t be the artist’s own son, Jean, who was born in 1865, or his nephew Pierre, born in 1867.

This acquisition has enabled Musée d’Orsay to enrich its collection of the artist’s works with an extraordinary painting from his early years and a unique vision of classical legacy and childhood in the 19^th siècle.

Author

• Paul Perrin, Director of Conservation and Collections, Musée d'Orsay