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The Duel After the Masquerade is a painting by the French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme, currently housed in the Musée Condé in Chantilly, France.

Background
Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) was born in Vesoul, France. In 1840 he became the student of Paul Delaroche, under whom he trained in the artistic disciplines of Academicism, and continued his training under Charles Gleyre when Gleyre took over Delaroche's atelier. In 1846 Gerome painted The Cock Fight, a genre painting with a neoclassical setting. He submitted it to the Salon of 1847 where it earned a third-place medal and generated considerable recognition for Gerome. Although The Cock Fight was criticized for flouting certain Academic conventions, it was sufficiently well-received to provide the impetus for the formation of the Neo-Grec movement among young French painters.

Subject
Duel marks the artist's departure from neoclassical settings.

It may have been inspired by a duel that took place after a masked ball in 1856 or -57. Thomas Couture rendered a different moment of the incident in his similarly named The Duel After the Masked Ball (1857).

Composition
The setting is a winter morning in the Bois de Boulogne, trees bare and snow covering the ground. A man dressed as Pierrot has been mortally wounded in a sword duel and has collapsed into the arms of a Duc de Guise. A surgeon in a doge of Venice costume, tries to stop the flow of blood, while a Domino clutches his own head in horror.

The survivor of the duel, dressed as an American Indian, walks away with his second, Harlequin, leaving behind his weapon and some feathers of his headdress, towards his carriage, shown waiting in the background.

The bizarreness of the scene in regard to the brightly colored costumes turns to pathos at the sight of blood on the Pierrot.

Legacy
The Duel After the Masked Ball was revealed at the Salon of 1857 where it was the most

The original became famous almost overnight with the critics of the Salon speculating about Gerome's sources for the incident depicted in the painting. In a poll taken in the winter of 1909–1910, Baltimoreans were asked to identify their fifty-five favorite works of art and The Duel After the Masquerade topped the list.

It was among the best-recognized contemporary works of the second half of the 19th century, thanks in large part to its prolific reproduction by Adolphe Goupil.

Replicas
Gerome painted two copies of Duel. One was obtained in 1859 by American businessman William Thompson Walters, who purchased it for $2,500 at a Gambart exhibition at the National Academy of Design in New York. It was not unusual for artists to replicate their own paintings and other versions had also been painted for Prince Alexander of Russia and for the Ali Pacha. Walters asked the manager of the exhibition at the National Academy of Design for a letter of authentication from Gérôme and a comparison of the work he had purchased to the original.

In each succeeding version, the attitude of the Indian-costumed participant's head is altered slightly to emphasize that he, not Harlequin, is the duellist.

Exhibition history
The Walters indicates that the work has been included in the following exhibitions:
 * From Ingres to Gauguin: French Nineteenth Century Paintings Owned in Maryland. Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore. 1951.
 * The Taste of Maryland: Art Collecting in Maryland 1800–1934. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1984.
 * Highlights from the Collection. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1998–2001.
 * Triumph of French Painting: Masterpieces from Ingres to Matisse. Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach; Royal Academy of Arts, London; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Dayton Art Institute, Dayton. 2000–2002.
 * A Magnificent Age: Masterpieces from the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte; The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. 2002–2004.
 * Déjà Vu? Revealing Repetition in French Masterpieces. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix. 2007–2008.
 * The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Musee D'Orsay, Paris; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. 2010–2011.
 * From Rye to Raphael: The Walters Story. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. 2014–2016.