The Slave Market (Gérôme painting)

The Slave Market () is an 1866 painting by the French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme. It shows a man inspecting the teeth of a nude, female European slave. The painting has a Middle-Eastern or North-African setting.  The context of this is probably the Barbary slave trade.

Adolphe Goupil bought the painting on 23 August 1866. He exhibitedit  at the Salon in 1867. It was bought and sold several times until Robert Sterling Clark bought it in 1930. Since 1955 it is part of the Clark Art Institute's collection.

Along with Gérôme's The Snake Charmer, The Slave Market has become an iconic example of 19th-century orientalist art.

 Race, religion, gender, and sexuality 
In an art historical context, Harem scenes usually show domestic spaces for the women in the Muslim societies. Males are only included if there is an association with sexual relations or to show barbary.  This painting has an unspecific Middle Eastern or North African setting in which a man inspects the teeth of a nude European female slave.

Before he did this painting, Gerome also did some picture about slave trading. Some of these scenes are set in the  Classical world. He painted a very similar scene in 1857, Buying a Slave, set in the ancient Greek or Roman world. In that painting,  racial differences between buyer, seller, and slave are not as apparent. The slaves depicted sometimes vary in skin color (as in The Slave Market of 1871); in all cases a woman or women are for sale, with men as buyers or sellers, but in the background of The Slave Market buyers can be seen inspecting a nude, dark-skinned male, and in the background of Slave Market in Ancient Rome (c. 1884) two enslaved males, one black and one white, can be seen.

A depiction by Gérôme of a slave in another context is Cave Canem (1881). In ancient Rome, a chained and collared man sits under the notice "Cave Canem," Latin for "Beware the Dog."

 Gallery: Gérôme's depictions of slaves and slave markets 

 References 

 Other websites 

 The Slave Market  at the Clark Art Institute's website
 Jean-Léon Gérôme: Slave Market by Sarah Lees from Nineteenth-century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, pp. 359–363.

Category:Slavery in art