Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904) was an undisputed professional success during his lifetime. Crowds flocked to see his vividly rendered historical and Orientalist compositions, and thanks to the mass marketing of his work through mechanical reproduction, he reached audiences on an unprecedented scale.

From the outset, however, his success met with critical hostility. Emile Zola, champion of Edouard Manet, dismissed Gerome as a cynical manufacturer of anecdotal images for popular consumption--a critique repeatedly echoed by historians of modern art. In light of revisionist and postmodern...