GfiROME 281 should be respected. But though she, no doubt, holds all these honors at their worth, yet 'she holds still more dear the art to which she owes, not only these, but all that has made her life a treasury of happy remembrances. {^r-v-T'z '<- r GfeROME* By Clarence Cook (born 1824) n the Paris Salon of 1847, a small picture appeared, representing a Greek boy and girl stirring up two game-cocks to fight. Although it was the work of an unknown painter, and had to contend with an unusually brilliant display of pictures, many of them by men al- ready famous, yet it strongly attracted the general pub- lic, partly by the novelty of the subject, and partly by the careful and finished manner of the painting. It de- lighted the critics as well, and one of the most distin- guished of them, Th^ophile Gautier, wrote : " A new Greek is born to us, and his name is Ge>6me ! " This picture, which was to prove the first leaf in a laurel-crown to be awarded the painter in his lifetime, and not, as is so often the case, by the tardy hand of Death, was the work of Jean-Ldon G£rome, a young man of twenty-three. He had been for six years under the teaching of Paul Delaroche, part of the time in Italy, but most of it in Paris. He was born at Vesoul, a small, dull town in the Department of Haute-Saone, in 1824. His father was a goldsmith, who, like most French fathers in his rank of life, had hoped to bring up his son to succeed him in his business. The boy did for a time, we believe, work in his father's shop, but he had a stronger natural bent for painting ; something perhaps in the occupation fostered, or even created, this taste — for not a few distinguished painters have been apprenticed to the goldsmith's trade — and his father, like a wise man, instead of opposing his son's wishes, did what he could. to further them. He bought him painting-materials ; and instead of sending him to a " school of design," or putting him under the tutelage of some third-rate drawing- master, such as is commonly found in country towns, he bought him a picture by Decamps, an artist since become famous, but then just in the dawn of his fame, and put it before his son as a model. Young Gdrdme made a copy of this pict- ure, and an artist from Paris, who happened to be passing through Vesoul, saw
- Copyright, 1804. by Selmar Hess.
