The Snake Charmer | |
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Artist | Jean-Léon Gérôme |
Year | c. 1879 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 82.2 cm × 121 cm (32.4 in × 48 in) |
Location | Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts |
The Snake Charmer is an oil-on-canvas Orientalist painting by French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme produced around 1879.[1] After it was used on the cover of Edward Said's book Orientalism in 1978, the work "attained a level of notoriety matched by few Orientalist paintings,"[2] as it became a lightning-rod for criticism of Orientalism in general and Orientalist painting in particular, although Said himself does not mention the painting in his book. It is in the collection of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, which also owns another controversial Gérôme painting, The Slave Market.