Bethsabée (Bathsheba)

The beautiful biblical Bathsheba was the wife of the Hittite Uriah, who served under Joab in King David's army. While her husband Uriah is away at war David first encounters Bathsheba, spying on her bathing from the roof of his palace. Captivated by her, the King sends messengers to find her and ‘sleeps with her’ (2 Samuel 11:4), an encounter from which she becomes pregnant. In order to conceal his actions, David recalls Uriah from battle under the guise of receiving an update on the war, but also to offer him an opportunity to sleep with his wife, so he will think her child is his own. However Uriah, unwilling to violate the ancient rule applying to warriors in active service, sleeps instead at the palace. With his repeated efforts to get the couple to sleep together unsuccessful, David instead instructs Joab to ensure Uriah be killed in battle by placing him on the front lines, and he dies at the siege of Rabbah. Bathsheba mourns her husband, but then is taken to David’s palace to become his wife, bearing him a son as a result of their first sinful union. However, Nathan the Prophet is sent to tell David that God is displeased and will punish him by killing his child. David accepts his sin, fasts and does penance, but their child dies of an illness. Following the death of their first child, Bathsheba later gives birth to Solomon whose position as the future king she is able to secure over David’s children from other marriages.
The present work is one of two known oil sketches for the finished version of the Bethsabée composition. The sketches demonstrate a clear progression of Gérôme moving the main figural group to a more central position within the composition, and the final painting depicts flowers lining the edge of the roof on which Bathsheba stands. While the narrative drama of the story is compelling, it plays a secondary role compared to Gérôme's desire to explore the complexities of the female form and to build a composition that derives power from the contrast of sinuous feminine curves against a geometrical architectural background. He was particularly interested in studying the female form out of doors in natural light. The series of paintings depicting Bethsabée was in fact painted at the artist’s studio in Bougival where Gérôme worked 'on the roof of his summer atelier, enabling him to pose his model in the open air and obtain wonderful atmospheric effects' (F. F. Herring, The Life and Works of Jean Léon Gérôme, 1892, p. 274).‌
A letter of authentication from Emily M. Weeks, Ph.D. dated 17 June 2022 accompanies this painting, and the work will be included in her revision to the Jean-Léon Gérôme catalogue raisonné, currently in preparation. We are grateful to Dr. Weeks for her assistance in cataloguing this work.
‌