Gérôme has his allotted place among the illustrious French painters of the Nineteenth Century. He achieved success, honours, official recognition; and he deserved them, if not for the compelling personality of his temperament, at least for his assiduous industry, his12 accurate, methodical, and picturesque way of seeing people and things, and the amazing and fertile variety both of his choice and his interpretation of subjects.

He was a pupil of Paul Delaroche and seems to have inherited the latter's adroitness in seizing upon the one salient and emotional detail in a composition. Like that historian-painter of the Death of the Duc de Guise, Gérôme excelled in always giving a dramatic stage setting to the persons and the events which he knew how to conjure up with such learned and scrupulous care.

In spite of his versatility, and notwithstanding that many a vast canvas has demonstrated his ingenious and resourceful talent, he takes his place beside Meissonier because of the extreme importance that he attached to accuracy and precise effects.

PIERRE LAFITTE & CIE, PARIS

PLATE II.—RECEPTION OF THE SIAMESE AMBASSADORS

(In the Museum at Versailles)

This picture possesses a curious interest because it shows in what a picturesque manner Gérôme could execute a painting officially ordered. He received the commission in 1865, through the Imperial Household. He has rendered with much felicity all the pompous and highly coloured aspect of the scene, very effective in the sumptuous setting of the Salle des Fêtes at Fontainebleau.

Although it i