Theatre: L'incendiaire

"L'incendiaire": A glorious artist against the Impressionist tide!

1895, Jean Léon Gérôme, 71, a renowned, adored and wealthy painter and sculptor, felt belittled by the emergence of a new artistic movement, Impressionism. He did not accept it and vehemently opposed it. Marie, his wife, was the daughter of the most important art dealer of the time, who had made Gérôme rich and famous. Until now she had accepted her role as domestic wife. Marie had never interfered in her husband's career. But with firmness she was going to "get out of the well"... She could not accept his attitude towards Pierre, one of his pupils, who was very attracted to the Impressionists. Nor could she accept the painter's violent quarrel with the photographer Nadar after the Caillebotte affair. Their points of view diverged on art and society in the throes of change. Was Gérôme overtaken by history? Isolated by his thirst for the absolute, did the man we now call the "fireman" shine with his last light? From glory to oblivion, the flamboyant artist faces up to the challenges of the Impressionists!

Written and directed by Jean Pétrement
with :Marie Christine Barrault and François Marthouret, Marie Toscan, Lucile Pétrement, Léonard Stéfanica, Jean Pétrement.