La Fin de la séance

This is a studio picture, painted when Gerome was in his sixties and one of the most powerful teachers in France, running a busy atelier at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In his later years he returned again and again to scenes of his own trade, the artist and the model in the studio, and this one catches the moment a session ends and the pose is let go. By 1886 the ground was shifting under exactly this kind of academic practice. The Impressionists had held eight exhibitions of their own by then, well outside the official Salon that Gerome defended. The painting has stayed in private hands and is rarely seen in public.