The Discipline of the Brush Paris, 1857. The 18th arrondissement is a place of movement and noise, where Alexandre Bloch enters the world. He does not drift into art; he is forged by it. Under the watchful eyes of Jean-Léon Gérôme and Jules Bastien-Lepage, his hands learn the rigorous language of academic precision. By 1880, his first appearance at the Salon marks the arrival of a painter who finds his purpose not in the abstract, but…