Léon de Smet (1881-1966)

This Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) painting found in an antique dealer’s collection recalls that, despite his academic reputation, he was a bold artist with no peer when it came to creating powerful images.

La Chasse aux lions chez les Indiens (Native Americans Hunting a Lion) is an early work by Jean-Léon Gérôme, which the soon-to-be famous Orientalist painter gave to his friend Jean-Baptiste Barrelon.

This curated selection pays tribute to Léon Bakst’s drawings for the Ballets Russes.

Following the announcement that Leon Black would not seek re-election as board chair amid controversy regarding ties to Jeffrey Epstein, MoMA has revealed that Kravis will step into the role. A former president of the board, she and her husband are significant collectors and supporters of the museum. (ARTnews)

Weary of painting ancient ruins, the young Gérôme (1824-1904) left Rome for the countryside to find new, more original models, like the now famous Giacomo Orlandi di Subiaco.

Last seen in 1900, this landscape of Paestum with a remarkable pedigree is appealing for its photographic qualities.

The exhibition at the Musée Basque et de l’histoire de Bayonne starts tomorrow and runs through December. The exhibition focuses on the French painter, Bayonne native and museum founder in the centenary year of his death, following the evolution of his style using works loaned from a number of major institutions.

Records and preemptions were on the agenda, with examples in a variety of artistic disciplines reaching high prices.

Gérôme’s La Chasse aux Lions, dated to 1845 and dedicated to his friend, the glass painter and pupil of Charles Gleyre (whose descendants bestowed the work), Barrelon, is offered at $15,000/25,000 by Ivoire December 19. It depicts a prefiguration of Delaroche’s Passage des Alpes, on which Gérôme would collaborate.

Nearly a year ago the centenarian and his wife founded Fontevraud Abbey Museum, which boasts early 900 works from classical antiquity to contemporary art. A former member of the Resistance, he was mayor of Issoudun during the Liberation and then a textile industrialist, notably on behalf of Lacoste.