July 7th, 1881

A punishing noonday heat of 93 degrees greeted the passengers arriving at the Hamburg Pier, located at the foot of Third Street in Hoboken, New Jersey.  While travelers checked in and loaded their baggage, the 142 officers and crew of the S.S. Wieland prepared to get underway.  The Hamburg-American Packet Company Ocean Steamers sailed for Cherbourg every Thursday with customary German regularity, and this day was no exception.  Cabin passengers paid $100 for a one-way first-class ticket, and $60 for second class, with round trips offered at reduced rates. Crossing the Atlantic took about eleven days, pier to pier.

The route taken by the Wieland dictated a first stop at Plymouth to disembark London-bound passengers and cargo before crossing the English Channel to Cherbourg. From Cherbourg, connections to Paris were made via railway transit, an eight-hour journey.  The Hamburg American Packet Company also offered convenient return trips from the continent departing from Le Havre, which was a brisk four-hour rail trip from Paris.

Theodore Gegoux boarded the Wieland and set sail from New York harbor on Thursday, July 7th.  Listed in the papers among the cabin passengers, Gegoux likely secured a round-trip ticket—ever one to take advantage of "reduced rates."  It is highly probable he booked a Second Class cabin, where the accommodations were nearly as fine as First Class.  As the company brochure advertised, "the Second Cabin is on the same deck forward of the First Cabin; it is comfortably furnished and also heated by steam; the surrounding staterooms are well lighted and ventilated. Both Saloons have large staterooms set apart for ladies traveling alone, and Conversation and Smoking Rooms, elegantly fitted up, offering to gentlemen all the opportunities for social intercourse."

Gegoux almost certainly chose Second Class for his excursion because a single major commission back home could cover the entire cost.  The local press, which had begun referring to the artist as "Prof. Gegoux," reported that he was painting a "life size portrait of Mrs. E. D. Spencer's son, of Port Leyden, who died almost a year ago.  The portrait is being executed in pastel at an expense of $130."

His financial calculations proved correct.  Gegoux successfully booked his return passage from Le Havre to New York aboard the S.S. Cimbria, departing France on September 24th and arriving back in New York harbor on October 5, 1881.  Gegoux appears on the official manifest of the Cimbria, registered as passenger number 112 of 115 Cabin travelers.  Though it provided Gegoux a safe passage home, the dual-masted steamer was ultimately an ill-fated vessel.  Just over a year later, in January 1883, the Cimbria sank near Hamburg following a catastrophic collision in the fog with the British ship Sultan, taking 389 souls to the bottom.

Forty years later, Gegoux looked back on this pivotal European journey, noting in his autobiography that he had never received any formal "instructions in the art of drawing and painting."  And yet, while "feasting his eyes on the many great works of art in the Louvre and in Luxembourg," he was deeply inspired to copy several masterpieces, firmly believing he could master the intricacies of color by doing so.  Ultimately, he set his sights on replicating three distinct masterworks.

First, he sought to capture a brilliant sunlight effect, which he discovered in Jules Breton's La Benediction des Bles (The Blessing of the Wheat at Atrois).  Next, he tackled a striking moonlight scene by Joseph Vernet.  Finally, he set out to replicate a dramatic lamplight effect, which he identified in his memoirs as a composition featuring Clytemnestra and her accomplice, Aegisthus.  Upon completion, these three canvases were highly praised as "excellent copies."

An interesting piece of historical detective work arises from the Gegoux 1925 autobiographical account.  In his text, the artist attributes that third "lamplight effect" copy to the Neoclassical painter Pierre-Paul Prud'hon.  However, subsequent art-historical scholarship has determined that Gegoux likely misremembered the artist's name later in life.  He almost certainly copied the definitive 1817 masterpiece by Baron Pierre-Narcisse Guerin, Clytemnestra Hesitating before Stabbing the Sleeping Agamemnon, which hangs in the Musee du Louvre.  Because Prud'hon is not known to have ever executed a canvas on this specific mythic subject, and because the Guerin painting is world renowned for its masterful, theatrical use of candlelit shadows, the theory of a simple memory lapse stands up to historical scrutiny.

Throughout his long career, Gegoux consistently maintained that he lacked formal academic training.  Modern researchers looking to verify his time in Paris have found no surviving record of his registration within the Louvre archives - a permit that would have technically been mandatory for any copyist working in the galleries.  However, because vast portions of the museum's administration records for 1881 are incomplete or completely lost to time, the lack of paperwork is hardly definitive.

Regardless of institutional receipts, the physical proof remained in the paint.  During his brief, intensive three-month residency in the summer of 1881, Gegoux thoroughly absorbed the genius of the French collections.  The trip yielded three masterful copies, and its profound impact rippled through the rest of his life's work.  From that summer onward, the independent portfolio of Gegoux would display a brilliant, lifelong flair for environmental illumination: the radiant skies of Breton, the luminous moons of Vernet, and the mysterious, flickering lamplight of Guerin.

Footnotes:
1) Master Class by Joseph A. Harriss .. Smithsonian Magazine, October 2002.
(2) The World newspaper .. New York, Tuesday, January 1, 1873

The author wishes to acknowledge the structural editing, archival organization, and research synthesis assistance provided by ChatGPT, an AI collaborator developed by OpenAI.

"The Blessing of Wheat at Artois" 1857 .. Jules Breton (1827 - 1906). Exhibited at the 1857 Paris Salon, this work translates the customs of this rural community on an epic scale.  In his rendering of a priestly procession on the plain of Courrieres, Breton emphasized that the Christian faith of the Community was intact.	"Clair de Lune" 1771 .. Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714 - 1789). Exhibited at the 1773 Paris Salon, this work is also known as "Seaport by Moonlight", a nocturnal scene featuring a "bright moon", which Gegoux referred to as "the moonlight effect of Joseph Vernet".	"Clytemnestra Hesitating before Stabbing the Sleeping Agamemnon" 1817 .. Pierre-Narcisse Guerin (1774 ? 1833). Exhibited at the 1817 Paris Salon, this work depicts the moments before Clytemnestra, with the aide of her lover Aegisthus, is to murder her unsuspecting husband Agamemnon.

Gegoux's copy of "The Blessing of Wheat at Artois" 1857, Jules Breton, is the only known example of Gegoux's Paris studies which stills exist today.

The readers are reminded that Gegoux was but 30 years of age and in the prime of his life.  Romance could hardly be surprising, but "no names are mentioned".