It was acquired in 1902 by August Heckscher for an unknown price, then reacquired by Clark's son Robert Sterling Clark in 1942 for $500-a striking example of Gérôme's fall from favor with collectors. His wife and heir Elizabeth Scriven Clark loaned it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art before selling it to Schaus Art Galleries in 1899 for $10,000 or $12,000, in a transaction that might also have involved receipt of another artwork. Spencer sold it to Alfred Corning Clark in 1888 for $19,500, who in 1893 loaned it for exhibition at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The painting was sold by Gérôme's dealer Goupil et Cie in 1880 to US collector Albert Spencer for 75,000 francs. Gérôme could perhaps have studied such an animal at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Zweifel, a herpetologist from the American Museum of Natural History…commented that 'the snake looks more like a South American boa constrictor than anything else,' a possibility that would add yet another layer of hybridity to the image. Regarding the snake depicted, "Richard G. the inscription thereafter is truncated…probably not a Koranic verse but rather a dedication to a caliph." So whoever disbelieves in the devil and believes in Allah, he indeed lays hold on the firmest handle which shall never break. There is no compulsion in religion-the right way is indeed clearly distinct from error. It is the famous Koranic verse 256 from Surah II, al-Baqara, The Cow, written in thuluth script, and reads Some parts of the inscriptions on the walls cannot easily be read, but "the large frieze at the top of the painting, running from right to left, is perfectly legible. The blue tiles are inspired by İznik panels in the Altınyol (Golden Passage) and Baghdad Kiosk of Topkapi palace in Ottoman-era Constantinople. The artist has placed this performance, however, in a hybrid, fictional space that derives from identifiably Turkish, as well as Egyptian, sources. Maxime du Camp, for example, described witnessing a snake charmer in Cairo during his 1849–51 trip with Gustave Flaubert in terms that are comparable to Gérôme’s depiction, including mention of the young male disrobing in order to obviate charges of fraud. Snake charming was not part of Ottoman culture, but it was practiced in ancient Egypt and continued to appear in that country during the nineteenth century. The Snake Charmer…brings together widely disparate, even incompatible, elements to create a scene that, as is the case with much of his oeuvre, the artist could not possibly have witnessed. Sarah Lees' catalogue essay for the painting examines the setting as a conflation of Ottoman Turkey and Egypt, and also explains the young snake charmer's nudity, not as an erotic display, but "to obviate charges of fraud" in his performance: Another painting by Gérôme entitled The Snake Charmer, date unknown, New Orleans Museum of Art.
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