By Alexandros Dimiropoulos
A duel on a winter morning, following a masquerade ball.
Pierrot has been wounded. A man dressed as a French nobleman supports him, while a Doge of Venice examines his injury. The victor, dressed as an American Indian, has laid down his sword and walks away accompanied by a Harlequin.
Admittedly, it is a strange scene.
In theory, a masquerade ball should be a joyful occasion, yet here it appears deeply dramatic. Even more curious is the fact that the fighting has already ended. Gérôme does not depict the most intense moment—the duel itself—but rather the moment immediately after, as has often been noted.
This is likely one of the defining characteristics of The Duel After the Masquerade. The painting invites the viewer to wonder what has just happened, why it happened, and why the participants are dressed in such costumes. It encourages the viewer to reconstruct the preceding events through imagination.
The duel is over; only its dramatic outcome remains. And perhaps this is what makes the scene even more powerful: seeing the consequences of an intense moment can be more dramatic than witnessing the moment itself.
Jean-Léon Gérôme employed a similar approach in at least two other paintings: The Execution of Marshal Ney (1868, Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield) and The Death of Caesar (1867, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore). In both works, he again chooses to depict the moment immediately after death rather than the act itself.
In all of these paintings, the viewer’s eye is uncertain where to rest. There are two competing focal points: the fallen or wounded figure and the victor who walks away.
When The Duel After the Masquerade was first exhibited at the Paris Salon, it was an immediate success. Many viewers were left wondering what event had inspired Gérôme’s imagination.
Although the answer remains uncertain, it seems likely that Gérôme was influenced by his teacher, the great painter Paul Delaroche. For instance, Delaroche’s The Assassination of the Duke of Guise (1834, Musée Condé, Chantilly) shares a similar aesthetic and narrative tension.
Moreover, the book Representing the Past in the Art of the Long Nineteenth Century mentions an earlier Delaroche painting, now lost, titled Les Suites d’un Duel (“The Aftermath of a Duel”). One may speculate that Gérôme was aware of this work and that The Duel After the Masquerade represents his own interpretation of what happens after a duel.
This remains, of course, only a hypothesis.
What is certain is that the painting had a lasting impact beyond the visual arts, influencing other forms of expression such as theatre and early cinema. Below is an image from the 1902 film Un duel après le bal.
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