Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824-1904) was a painter and sculptor in the style now known as Academic Art, and by 1880 he was the world’s most famous living artist. He studied with Paul Delaroche and Charles Gleyre. Between 1864 and 1904, more than 2,000 students received at least some of their art education through Gérôme’s atelier at the École des Beaux-Arts, including Mary Cassatt and George Bridgman. Other students include Thomas Eakins, Abbott Handerson Thayer, J. Alden Weir and Theodore Robinson, who was a close friend of Claude Monet and American Impressionist Theodore Earl Butler. (A distant relative of Meryl Ann’s, Theodore Earl Butler married Monet’s stepdaughter and favorite model, Suzanne Hoschedé.)
Gerome collaborated with his student, Charles Bargue, on the famous Charles Bargue Drawing Course published in 1866 and still used today.
Meryl Ann Butler studied with Harold Stevenson,
who studied with Norman Rockwell,
who studied with George Brant Bridgman,
who studied with Jean-Léon Gérôme.
