During a stay in Bursa I was taken by the architecture of the baths, and they certainly offered the occasion to study nudes. As the temperature was extremely high, I did not hesitate to make myself completely naked; seated on my campstool, my colorbox on my knees, my palette in my hand, I was a little grotesque, but you have to know how to adapt yourself as necessary.
-Jean-Leon Gerome, writing of his visit in 1875
The Great Bath at Bursa (1885) is a composition that was put together with a combination of memories and sketches made ten years earlier and then finished with nudes sketched in Paris.
-Jean-Leon Gerome: His Life, His Work, Gerald Ackerman
It is related of him [Gerome] that when he was engaged in the modeling of a [female] figure he had difficulty in satisfying himself in regard to the disposition of the draperies. In despair he invited a number of savants to meet him at dinner. To them he told his trouble and asked if science could come to the rescue of art.
-The Greatest Painters of France, Munsey’s Magazine, 1901
I pulled into Bursa by bus and pulled out by ferry. I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I’d heard about its landmark buildings, and it was on my way back to Istanbul so I stopped over. At dinner the waiter recommended Bursa’s specialty Iskender kebap, but I thought it didn’t need so much melted sheep butter poured over the shawarma already smothered in tomato sauce. Gerome painted a baker’s dozen of nudes in the hammam there. I don’t think his painting needed so many of them either given they were all the same French model.
The Great Bath at Bursa