To commemorate its bicentenary year in 2016, the Fitzwilliam Museum has acquired a newly discovered portrait by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904). Gérôme is one of the most important French painters of the 19th century, yet his work is only represented in six British public collections to date.

The picture had remained in the artist’s collection until his death in 1904 and was thought lost, until its reappearance at auction in France in 2013. Recent cleaning has confirmed it as a masterpiece, and in unusually fine condition.

The dramatic full-length 'swagger-portrait' is of Claude-Armand Gérôme, (1827-50) the artist's younger brother, depicted as a student in his uniform from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. This was a very personal work of the artist, and from the early prime of his career. It is a virtuoso example of his skills as a portraitist, and was one of the works that consolidated Gérôme's reputation.