| Sumario: | "[M]y weak health improved under the influence of the good climate and life in the open air", Gérôme remembers, "and I set to work with ardor...." As he stated, Gérôme was struck by blue skies overhead, but, more to the point, the constant light he needed for painting was essential. Perhaps a month into the trip, Gérôme and Bartholdi posed for a timeless photograph, decked out in their Egyptian outfits, a turban shrouds Gérôme's head on the left and a fez is perched on top of Bartholdi. Gérôme clearly "believe[d] his canvas should "think" rather than possess 'agreeable images.'" The I Bashi-Bazouk i isn't a portrait of a particular person Gérôme observed while traveling throughout the Muslim world. The trip lasted from January 1st to April 13th and since the 1868 Salon of Paris opened soon after Gérôme's return, the I Bashi-Bazouk i picture was not included. 79 Frederick Douglass, "Negro Portraits", I The Liberator i , April 20, 1849, 16, no. 6 edition, 62. 80 GUEST EDITOR'S NOTE & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: My intention was to write two articles for this special issue: An introduction on Black Muslim Art and the Black Lives Matter Movement, and a full article on the I Bashi-Bazouk i painting of the French Orientalist painter, Jean-Léon Gérôme.
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