A CLOSER LOOK
Gérôme painted Chariot Race in 1876 in oil on a cradled wooden panel. The picture is 156 centimetres wide, nearly twice its height, giving the racing teams room to spread across the track while spectators and architecture establish the scale of the Circus Maximus.
The Art Institute says Gérôme claimed to base the scene on archaeological research. That claim helps explain the work’s abundance of architectural and costume detail, but the painting remains a nineteenth-century reconstruction rather than documentary evidence for a particular ancient race.
Alexander Turney Stewart, the New York department-store magnate, acquired the painting first. Its arrival in the United States drew press attention. Henry James described the struggle among animals, drivers, and wheels, while also noticing the hard, highly finished surface associated with Gérôme’s work.
The ownership trail recorded by the museum continues through Stewart’s widow, Henry Hilton, dealer E. H. van Ingen, and George F. Harding Jr. The work entered the Art Institute in 1984 after transfer from the George F. Harding Museum. Online viewing preserves the composition and many details, though it cannot convey the panel’s physical scale or surface.
