Giovani greci ad un combattimento di galli

Gérôme was 23 and had just failed to win the Prix de Rome, the prize that opened the official career he wanted. He nearly kept this canvas hidden, afraid of another rejection, until his teacher Paul Delaroche talked him into sending it to the Salon of 1847. It worked. The writer Théophile Gautier singled it out, and overnight Gérôme belonged to a fashionable new group painting the ancient world with cool, polished precision. The subject is slight on purpose, two young Greeks setting their birds against each other, a nude boy and girl watching a fight that means nothing. What people admired was the finish, the clear light and smooth surface that would carry him through a long career of honours.