Jean Leon Gerome Ferris

Who was Jean Leon Gerome Ferris?

Jean Leon Gerome Ferris was an American painter best known for his series of 78 scenes from American history, entitled The Pageant of a Nation, the largest series of American historical paintings by a single artist.

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Stephen James Ferris, a portrait painter and a devotee of Jean-Léon Gérôme and Mariano Fortuny. He grew up around art, having been trained by his father and having two acclaimed painters, Edward Moran and Thomas Moran, as uncles.

Ferris enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1879 and trained further at the Académie Julian beginning in 1883 under William-Adolphe Bouguereau. He also met his namesake Jean-Léon Gérôme, who greatly influenced Ferris's decision to paint scenes from American history. As Ferris wrote in his unpublished autobiography, "[Gérôme's] axiom was that one would paint best that with which he is most familiar".

However, initially his subjects were Orientalist in nature, that movement having been in vogue when he was young. Some of his material was original, some of it took after Fortuny, but he was skilled enough, despite never having had any experience with Asia. In 1882, he exhibited a painting entitled Feeding the Ibis, which was valued at $600.