Very rare 1885 cast bronze medallion honoring famous French artist Jean Leon Gerome by J. C. Chaplain. It is a magnificent art piece both front and back. It has a very nice patina. The photos make it look a little darker than it really is. It is perfect with no marks or damage of any kind. If you look up the history of this piece several are located in major museum collections, both in France and the USA. It is a fairly large medallion meauring 100mm in diameter. Below is a little history on the artist, J. C. Chaplain, and the medal which I took from a website.

Beginning with his portrait of the medallist Auguste Barre in 1879, Chaplain executed a marvelous series of some twenty cast medals representing prominent artists and architects of his day. This series, obviously inspired by the Romantic vision of David, ranges from the great academic painter Ernest Meissonier to the visionary architect of the Paris Opéra Charles Garnier. His portrait of the great orientalist Jean-Léon Gérome (1824-1904), at the age of sixty is a tour-de-force example of Chaplain's technique in its depiction of the chiselled bone structure of the artist's face, and the freely drawn hair, extending in short wavy lines almost to the edge of the medal. The reverse, Pittura, surrounds the muse of painting with images drawn from Gérome's celebrated works: the sphinx, the Blue Mosque and the gladiator's helmet. Chaplain, in fact, created some of the most masterful reverse designs in the history of the medal. His reverse celebrating the composer Charles Gounod (1818-1893)  is both elegant and complex. The figure of Inspiration sits deep in thought, her quill pen in hand, at a Gothic-Revival organ whose vertical elements extend and disappear into the upper left margin of the composition. The musical forms favored by the composer--Drames Lyriques Messes Oratorios Symphonies--are superimposed over a branch, the leaves of which entwine the letters and reach toward Inspiration's long and elegant braid. As was his custom, Chaplain lavishes particular attention on the coiffure, which is drawn in sinuous lines and crowned by a jewel-like floral wreath. Inspiration rests her hands on the edge of a composition book whose cover lists Gounod's most celebrated work, the opera Faust. Her delicately slippered foot rests on a stool, while the strap of the purse subtly reveals the form of her leg by gathering the material of the gown. Another reverse worthy of note is that created to celebrate the gift of Chantilly and its extensive art collections in 1886 to the French Institute by Henri d'Orléans, duc d'Aumale. Chaplain, one of the few medallists to depict pure architecture, modeled the chateau, its walled gardens and celebrated stables in low relief against the landscape of the surrounding countryside. The Musée Condé, as the collection became known, flanks the Duke's coat of arms at the top of the composition while the date of the gift crops it horizontally at the bottom of the field. Chaplain was one of the first artists to produce models for cast medals which were equally effective when reduced in size and struck. This had the effect of blurring the traditional distinctions between these two techniques and opening, by the end of the nineteenth century, the field of medallic art to increased experimentation by artists who did not necessarily follow the conventional career path of Chaplain's generation.

The medallion will be shipped at the fixed price of $15.00 which includes insurance and careful packaging. Shipping cost is for the continental USA only. Email me if you have any questions. Sorry, no returns.