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The Snake Charmer
Jean-Léon Gérôme · Realism & Academic
- Artist
- Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904)
- Date
- c. 1879
- Dimensions
- 83.8 x 122.1 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, United States
The Snake Charmer shows a naked boy with a python coiled around his body, performing for a group of armed men seated against a wall covered in blue Iznik tiles, while an old musician plays a flute.
A closer look
Gérôme painted every detail with photographic precision: the intricate tilework with its Arabic inscriptions, the weapons and costumes of the spectators, the scales of the snake. The boy, seen from behind, stands at the centre like a performer on a stage. Yet the scene is a fantasy constructed in the studio, combining architecture and objects from different places and periods. Today the painting is often discussed as a key example of 'Orientalism', the Western way of imagining the East as exotic, timeless and sensual; the scholar Edward Said used it on the cover of his famous book on the subject.
