For most of the twentieth century, prints—especially reproductive prints—have been relegated to secondary status in the art world, if they have been mentioned at all. Painting and sculpture received the most attention; prints definitely were the “Other” and beyond the pale of the discourse. In the nineteenth century, however, prints carried more weight. Their role in disseminating art and culture was recognized and valued; a good print was considered worthier than a bad painting. Moreover, artists often earned more money from the sale of a copyright than for a single canvas, and they achieved greater critical and popular notice from the wider distribution of their work as prints. The proliferation of reproductive formats, from large, highly finished engravings suitable for framing to small photographs intended for the album, advanced the careers of both artists and publishers and brought artwork to a vast and diverse audience. Gérôme & Goupil: Art and Enterprise, a catalogue for the traveling exhibition of the same name, addresses the collaboration of the artist Jean Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) and his publisher Adolphe Goupil (1806-1893), and it informs the business history of art as well as broader cultural issues of consumption, reception, and reputation.

The acquisition, promotion, and publication of Gérôme’s work by the house of Goupil offers a compelling case study in the nineteenth-century global art and media market. Not only was Gérôme one of the most successful artists of his day, he also married Marie Goupil, the daughter of France’s foremost fine arts publisher. During 1859 and the turn of the 20th century, the Goupil Gallery sold 337 of Gérôme’s paintings from a total of 430 transactions, and reproduced 122 of them in 370 different photographic and print editions. Indeed, as Emile Zola sneered in 1867, “Mr. Gérôme obviously works for Goupil. He paints a picture for it to be photographed and printed and sold by the thousand.”

In 1829, Goupil began his career as a publisher and printseller in Paris, and in about 1846, his firm began to sell drawings and paintings. From buying paintings Goupil gained the reproduction rights to the work of desirable artists, income that went beyond traditional gallery sales. Between 1841 and 1877, the house of Goupil opened branches in Berlin, Brussels, the Hague, London, New York, and Vienna, stocked by warehouses from Egypt to Australia. (Two of its better-known employees were Theo Van Gogh and his brother Vincent.) Through the 1850s, the firm advertised itself as the publisher of Delaroche, Scheffer, and Vernet, and prints and photographs of their works stayed in Goupil’s catalogue until after 1900. In 1859, even as the popularity of these artists declined, Delaroche’s student Gérôme joined the stable of artists represented by Goupil. Also during the 1850s, the firm began to use photography for making smaller format reproductions, and in the next decade it adopted new photomechanical processes: first the Woodburytype (known in France as photoglyptie), and later, the photogravure. Described as “devoted to the picture industry,” the firm supplied all kinds of formats to all kinds of buyers right up through its liquidation that was completed in 1921.

The book’s attractive organization, copious illustration, and generous use of color evoke the nineteenth-century love of layered visual excess and detail. Four initial essays introduce the roles of Gérôme and Goupil in this fruitful partnership and provide some context for the artwork. Hélène Lafont-Couturier, Director of the Musée Goupil, discusses the artist and printer’s joint contributions to the growth of the international art trade, emphasizing the importance of the photograph and the reproductive print during the nineteenth century. DeCourcy McIntosh, Director of the Frick Art & Historical Center, evaluates Goupil’s sales presence in the United States and the firm’s role in Gérôme’s American success. He describes Goupil’s advocacy for art, including the formation of the International Art Union in New York, and the firm’s savvy in the developing American market. Florence Rionnet of the Musée de Dinard provides a brief essay on sculptural reproductions commissioned and marketed by Goupil in plaster and bronze, with special, but not exclusive, reference to works after Gérôme’s paintings. For Goupil, Rionnet says, these were “mere byproducts of his publishing activity,” but for Gérôme, sculpture represented an important creative mirror to his painting as well as a medium designed specifically for reproduction. Gerald Ackerman, author of the standard Gérôme monograph and catalogue raisonné, presents an account of Gérôme’s collaboration with lithographer Charles Bargue on the design course published by Goupil that was adopted for schools in the city of Paris and for British institutions supervised by the South Kensington museums.

The catalogue section of the book combines narrative with detailed descriptions of the artwork exhibited. Régine Bigorne, an independent scholar connected with the Musée Goupil, lays out the history of the Goupil family and Gérôme’s marriage into it, and introduces through portraits the relationships that affected the business spanning two generations. In a second essay, “A Publishing Policy,” Bigorne focuses on three of Gérôme’s paintings—King Candaules (1859), Duel After the Ball (1857), and Golgotha (1867)—to illustrate the scope of the commercial system Goupil developed to disseminate his son-in-law’s work. She presents the history of each canvas—sometimes more than one per subject—and describes the number and type of reproductions with their dates of issue. Engravings, lithographs, photographs, and photogravures were offered to suit any pocketbook. Seventeen versions of Duel After the Ball are illustrated, a useful indicator of the work’s success and wide distribution. Bigorne suggests it was probably the subject which enjoyed the greatest popularity. She also provides two sections on specific aspects of Gérôme’s oeuvre, subjects based on antique or Neo-Grèc themes and history paintings, while Stephen Edidin, Curator of the Dahesh Museum, treats Gérôme’s Oriental subjects. Pierre-Lin Renié, Curator of the Musée Goupil, developed the useful appendices, listing each of Gérôme’s works reproduced and published by Goupil, plus a chronology and an illustrated page spread showing family and business ties. Lastly, the book includes a selected bibliography and index to works of art mentioned in the text.

Several of these essays discuss and clarify the complex uses of painted and printed reproductions within the context of the art market and the publishing industry of the time. One of the most useful aspects of the book is its attention to the issue of composition versus execution in reductions, where smaller copies of paintings were used to meet the demand for exhibitions, to further sales, or to assist the engraver. The catalogue cites additions and changes made to these painted versions in establishing “original” status for a particular canvas, as well as relationships among the several kinds of reproductions. Patricia Mainardi addressed this topic at a recent symposium convened by the Dahesh Museum, outlining the nuanced understanding of originality and duplication in the nineteenth-century as distinguished from the modernist focus on which came first.

The appetite for pictures represented by the dual success of Gérôme and Goupil deserves wider recognition, and this volume offers rich documentation of a media phenomenon that formed the basis, in many ways, of today’s visual culture. As a case study, it provides a deep but somewhat narrow treatment. McIntosh’s essay on the reception of the artist and the firm by the United States most successfully conveys the larger context of competition and other market forces among publishers, dealers, and collectors. But we are left wanting to know more by way of comparison with, say, Goupil’s output of works by other artists such as Meissonier.

While the attacks of contemporary critics like Emile Zola are presented in the text, surprisingly none of the authors mention the blatant racism and sexism in Gérôme’s work. Such attitudes are addressed only obliquely as with a quote from Earl Shinn, who wrote in 1887 that Gérôme was free of the “most inartistic sin” of moralizing, being not at all concerned with “the cruelty of his Pachas” or " the degradation of his women of the Harem." In the nineteenth century, Gérôme’s subjects represented the exotic Oriental “Other,” but his prints were mainstream. Today, it is the prints that are obscure, and this study enlightens modern sensibilities to the critical role once played by the range of reproductive works in the home, the gallery, and culture at large, without assessing their content. The nineteenth-century audience accepted and shared Gérôme’s biases, but this is a study of consumption as well as production, after all, and it would have been appropriate to mention the degree to which all the formats of Gérôme’s work played to the prejudices of his age.