Born in Vesoul, Haute-Saône, the French academic Classicist and Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme moved to Paris to study under the French history painter Paul Delaroche (1797–1856) at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1842. He followed in Delaroche’s footsteps to Rome and attended life classes there. Gérôme returned to France in 1844 and joined the Paris based atelier of the Swiss artist Charles Gleyre (1806–1874). He entered the Prix de Rome but did not reach the final stages. From 1847, he regularly took part in the annual art exhibition at the Salon des Artistes Français, where he won several prizes (Bénézit, 2006, p. 77).
Gérôme travelled widely. In 1855 he visited Istanbul for the first time, and in 1856, Egypt, returning with a large portfolio of sketches and studies (Bénézit, 2006, p. 77). He was accompanied by the sculptor Auguste Bartholdi (1834–1904), as well as the painters Léon Belly (1827–1877) and Narcisse Berchère (1819–1891), who also produced Orientalist paintings. During his journey Gérôme took a trip on the Nile and spent four months in Old Cairo, where Sulaiman Pasha had provided him with a house (Lafont-Couturier, 2000, p. 109).
Gérôme's marriage to Marie Goupil in 1863, daughter of one of the most important art dealers and publishers of his time, Adolphe Goupil (1839–1883), proved socially advantageous and he quickly made a name for himself to the extent that his work began to sell for substantial sums. In 1864, Gérôme was appointed to a professorship at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then to membership at the Institut de France (1865). In 1863, he was appointed as one of the three professors at the École des Beaux-Arts (Bénézit, 2006, p. 77).
Between January and April 1868, Gérôme undertook a further trip to Egypt, Palestine and Syria. Six companions travelled with him, among them the painters Paul-Marie Lenoir (1843–1881), Léon Bonnat (1833–1922) and Willem de Famars Testas (1834–1896) (De Hond, 2013, p. 92, note 3). He was also accompanied by his brother-in-law, the photographer and collector of Islamic art Albert Goupil (1840–1884) and the French novelist, publicist and journalist Edmond About (1828–1885).
The journey began with a visit to Cairo and its surroundings; they then proceeded to cross the Sinai in a caravan and to travel to Jerusalem via the Monastery of St. Catherine and the ruined city of Petra. Afterwards, they made a journey to Damascus, where they took the stagecoach to Beirut, the terminus of the expedition for most of them. The journey from Cairo to Beirut had lasted about four months (De Hond, 2013, p. 70).
Lenoir recorded the journey in his book Le Fayoum, le Sinaï et Pétra (1872) which contains engravings after photographs by Goupil.
In 1871, and again in 1875, Gérôme returned to Istanbul. His arrival on May 15 1875 was much vaunted among Istanbul’s cosmopolitan expatriate community, and it produced several newspaper reports. In the Ottoman capital, Gérôme received commissions for paintings of palaces by the Sultan, and he made about fifteen studies of mosques, including the Rüstem Pasha Mosque (see IG_149). On the same trip, the painter also visited Bursa (Roberts, 2010, pp. 120–122).

Gérôme continued to travel, visiting Granada in 1883. In 1893 he was nominated together with Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (1845–1902), to the honorary co-presidency of the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français; this was followed by his election as officer first class of the Légion d’Honneur (1898) (Bénézit, 2006, p. 77).

Bénézit, E. (ed.) (2006). Gérôme, Jean-Léon. In Dictionary of artists (Vol. 6, pp. 77-78). Paris: Gründ.

De Hond, J. (2013). "Ceci aura néanmoins probablement son utilité": Willem de Famars Testas au Caire, 1858-1860. In: M. Volait (ed.), Le Caire dessiné et photographié au XIXe siècle (pp. 69-94). Paris: Picard.

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904): l'histoire en spectacle, [exhibition catalogue] Paris: Skira Flammarion 2010.

Lafont-Couturier, H. (2000). Gérôme & Goupil: art and enterprise [exhibition catalogue], New York: Dahesh Museum of Art.

Lenoir, P. (1872). Le Fayoum, le Sinai et Petra. Expéditions dans la Moyenne-Égypte et l’Arabie Pétrée sous la direction de J. L. Gérôme. Paris: Henri Plon. https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_brFB4CfDkFEC

Pouillon, F. (2012). Gérôme, Jean-Léon. In: Pouillon, F., Dictionnaire des orientalistes de langue française. Paris: Karthala, pp. 465-466.

Roberts, M. (2010). Gérôme in Istanbul. In S. Allen, & M. Morton (eds.), Reconsidering Gérôme (pp. 119–134). Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust.