Greek Slave

Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824–1904)

1870

Medium/TechniqueOil on canvas

Dimensions54 x 37.1 cm (21 1/4 x 14 5/8 in.)

Credit LineGift of George A. Goddard

Accession number87.410

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsPaintings

Collections

Europe

ProvenanceOctober, 1870, stolen from the artist's studio in Bougival by an American journalist and taken to Chicago [see note 1]. Acquired at an antique shop, Chicago, by M.P. Kennard, Boston; sold by Kennard to George A. Bethune, Boston; May 27, 1886, Bethune sale, Leonard and Co., Boston, lot 50, to George A. Goddard, Boston; 1887, gift of Goddard to the MFA. (Accession Date: December 6, 1887)

NOTES:
[1] During the Franco-Prussian war, an English journalist and an American journalist visited Gérôme's studio in Bougival. The American took away this unfinished painting, supposedly to deliver it to a lawyer, but instead apparently returning to Chicago with it. Later, Charles Gilman of Chicago recalled seeing the painting in an antique shop, where his friend M. P. Kennard of Boston had purchased it. When the MFA acquired it in 1887, Gérôme was flattered that the painting had been acquired by a museum and offered to sign it. See Ingres & Delacroix through Degas & Puvis de Chavannes: The Figure in French Art, 1800-1870 (exh. cat. Shepherd Gallery, May-June, 1975), pp. 257-258, cat. no. 107.