07 Paintings by the Orientalist Artists of the Nineteenth-Century, with footnotes, #11

Orientalism is a term that is used for the depiction of aspects in Middle Eastern cultures. It refers to the works of the Western artists on Oriental subjects, produced from their travels in Western Asia, during the 19th century. Depictions of Islamic "Moors" and "Turks" can be found in Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art. A creative apprehension of a completely different world with its own laws, customs, special attitude towards life and death, love, feelings, and beauty. Wikipedia/Yana Naumovna Lukashevskaya

Henri Emilien Rousseau, French, 1875-1933 

Cavalier des Ouled Sidi-Cheikh 

Oil on board 

6 3/8 x 4 3/4 inches

Private collection

Sidi Sheikh Ben Abu Bekr was a holy marabout, descending in direct line from Abu Bakr , the companion of the Prophet Muhammad, the first caliph of Islam, and his descendants in their genealogy, uninterrupted, go up to Adam . It would be seen very badly, in the Algerian Sahara, if this ancient and venerable nobility were disputed.

Sidi Sheikh according to legend, was a person of exemplary piety and holiness, with the gift of performing miracles, which he passed on to his posterity and especially to the eldest of his descendants. He had an immense influence over all the populations between the border of Morocco and Jebel Amour. More on Sidi Sheikh Ben Abu Bekr

Henri Rousseau Henry, Emilien Rousseau (Cairo 1875 - Aix-en-Provence in 1933) is an Orientalist painter. A pupil of Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Beaux Arts in Paris, he won the second Grand Prix de Rome in 1900 and a travel grant at the Salon of French Artists. He traveled to Belgium, the Netherlands, North Africa, Spain and Italy where he admired the great masters (Rubens, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Murillo, the Titian, Raphael etc ...)

After this initiatory journey, he settled in Versailles and set up his studio at the Villa des Arts in Paris. In 1919 he moved to Aix in Provence with his large family (seven children). Knight of the Legion of Honour in arts. His work  is dedicated to Tunisia, Algeria and especially Morocco, Provence and the Camargue remained its anchor points. His success was with a bourgeois and wealthy clientele, where he sold his work at numerous exhibitions in Paris, Brussels, Stockholm, Marseilles. More Henri Rousseau

Anders Zorn, (1860–1920)

Kaikroddare

Oil on canvas

Private collection

Anders Leonard Zorn (18 February 1860 – 22 August 1920) was one of Sweden's foremost artists. He obtained international success as a painter, sculptor and etcher. From 1875 to 1880 Zorn studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm. Members of Stockholm society approached him with commissions. Zorn traveled extensively to London, Paris, the Balkans, Spain, Italy and the United States, becoming an international success as one of the most acclaimed painters of his era. It was primarily his skill as a portrait painter that gained Zorn international acclaim based principally upon his incisive ability to depict the individual character of his model. At 29, he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur at the Exposition Universelle 1889 Paris World Fair. More Anders Leonard Zorn

Georges Washington, (French, 1827-1910)

The hunt 

Oil on panel

22 x 41cm (8 11/16 x 16 1/8in)

Private collection

George Washington, born 15 September 1827 in Marseille and died November 19, 1901 in Douarnenez, was a French Orientalist painter. The young Georges Washington moved to Paris, where he trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. The artist’s exotic style was  indebted to Eugène Delacroix. Washington’s love of the Middle East and its customs was further enhanced and encouraged by his father-in-law, the military and Orientalist painter Henri-Félix-Emmanuel Philippoteaux (1815-1884), whose daughter Anne-Léonie Philippoteaux married Washington in Paris on 6th August 1859.

Not long after finishing his training at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Washington embarked on the first of a number of trips to Algeria and based on close observation of its inhabitants, their dress and customs in 1857 he made his Paris debut at the Salon des Artistes Français with a view of nomads titled Plaine du Hoiina (Sahara Algérien). From then up until 1901 Washington continued to be a popular exhibitor at the Salon; one of his first works shown there to gain critical acclaim was Nomades dans le Sahara en Hiver. In addition to Paris, Washington also showed his work in Moscow in 1881 and was later posthumously honoured when four of his paintings were included in the Exposition Coloniale de Marseille in 1906.

Following two commissions from a Belgian company, he travelled to Morocco and then subsequently visited Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey, which were to inspire his varied subjects including battle scenes and cavalry skirmishes. His travels also took him to America for the unveiling in Philadelphia of a cyclorama  of the Battle of Gettysburg by his brother-in-law Paul-Dominique Philippoteaux (1846-1923).

Following the death of his wife he retired to live with his daughter and son-in-law at Douarnenez on the Brittany coast, where he died shortly after on 19th November 1901. More George Washington

Alexander M. Rossi, (British, 1840-1916)

Reflection, c. 1896

Oil on canvas

77.5 x 55.5cm (30 1/2 x 21 7/8in)

Private collection

Alexander Mark Rossi (1840 – 9 January 1916) was a successful British artist specializing in genre works who flourished in the late 19th century. He was born on the Greek Island of Corfu, the son of Dr Mark Rossi, an Italian who was one of the three judges presiding over the Ionian Islands during the time of British rule. On a visit to Preston, England in 1866, Rossi met and later married Jane Gillow. He remained in the United Kingdom thereafter. In the 1870s he moved to London.

Between 1871 and 1903, Rossi exhibited 66 works at the Royal Academy and was also a member of the Hogarth Club. Many of his paintings were of children and young adults, the models often being members of his own family. He died in Golders Green, London on 9 January 1916. More on Alexander Mark Rossi 

HOVSEP PUSHMAN, 1877 - 1966

Guardian of the Seraglio (the women's apartments (harem))

Oil on canvas

43 1/4 by 25 1/4 inches (109.8 by 64.1 cm)

Private collection

Hovsep Pushman, 1877 - 1966, a naturalized American citizen, was born in Armenia in 1877. At age 11, he held a scholarship at the Constantinople Academy of Art. By 17, he had gone to the United States and started teaching art in Chicago. He studied the culture of China, immersing himself in oriental art and perhaps philosophy. He then studied in Paris. He exhibited his work at the Salon des Artistes Francais in Paris, winning a bronze medal in 1914 and a silver medal in 1921. He also was awarded the California Art Club’s Ackerman Prize in 1918.

Pushman’s artistic identity began to take shape after he opened his own studio in 1921. Thereafter, Pushman’s career was devoted to one subject, oriental mysticism, and one form, the still life. His paintings typically featured oriental idols, pottery and glassware, all glowing duskily as if illuminated by candlelight. They were symbolic, spiritual paintings, and were sometimes accompanied by readings, which help explain their allegorical significance. 

Pushman died in 1966 in New York City. More on Hovsep Pushman

Jose Cruz Herrera, LA LINEA DE LA CONCEPTION 1890 - 1972 CASABLANCA, ÉCOLE ESPAGNOLE

YOUNG ORIENTAL LADY WITH A NECKLACE

Oil on cardboard

35 x 24,1 cm ; 13 3/4 by 9 3/8 in.

Private collection

José Cruz Herrera (1 October 1890 – 11 August 1972) was a Spanish painter who concentrated principally on genre works and landscape art. He worked in Spain, Uruguay, Argentina, France and especially Morocco, where he lived for much of his life in Casablanca.

His talent was soon apparent and he began formal training in Cádiz. He continued his studies at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid before being awarded a grant to study in Paris and Rome in 1915. He subsequently received several more awards. He concentrated on genre works and landscapes, but he is best known as an orientalist painter, with a particular faculty for producing atmospheric depictions of scenes of everyday life in Morocco.

Cruz Herrera travelled to Montevideo in Uruguay and Buenos Aires in Argentina in 1922. He went to Morocco in 1929. He subsequently established a studio at Neuilly-sur-Seine, just outside Paris, and contributed to collective exhibitions in 1934, 1935 and 1936 at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He also exhibited solo at various times in Madrid, Barcelona and London in 1912, Antwerp in 1931, Casablanca in 1933, and Paris in 1934.

 After the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, he returned to Morocco. The following year Spain awarded Cruz Herrera a Knight's Cross in the Order of Isabella the Catholic, followed by a knighthood in the Civil Order of Alfonso X, the Wise in 1958. He died on 11 August 1972 in Casablanca but his remains were transferred back to La Línea to be buried there. More on José Cruz Herrera 

Alberto Pasini, (Italian, 1826-1899)

Landscape with Arab horsemen , c. 1857

Oil on canvas

66 x 41cm (26 x 16 1/8in)

Private collection

Alberto Pasini (Busseto, 3 September 1826 – Cavoretto, 15 December 1899) was an Italian painter. He was enrolled at the age of 17 years, in the Academy of Fine Art of Parma, studying landscape painting and drawing. In Parma, he was helped early on by Antonio Pasini, who painted for the local nobility and collaborated with the publishing house established by Giovanni Battista Bodoni. By 1852, he exhibited a series of thirty designs, made into lithographs, depicting various castles around Piacenza, Lunigiana and Parma. He was noticed by the artist Paolo Toschi, who encouraged Pasini to travel to Paris, where Pasini first joined the workshop of Charles and Eugène Ciceri, of the so-called School of Barbizon.

In 1853 his lithograph of The Evening gained him admittance to the Paris Salon, and to the workshop of the famous Théodore Chassériau. The eruption of the Crimean War offered a new opportunity, when in February 1855, this latter painter recommended Pasini to replace him on the entourage of the French plenipotentiary minister Nicolas Prosper Bourée to Persia. Pasini accompanied him, returning through the north of Persia and Armenia before reaching the port of Trebizond. In subsequent trips, he visited Egypt, the Red Sea, Arabia, Istanbul, and Persia. Pasini parlayed his exposures during this trip into numerous highly detailed paintings of orientalist subjects. He left again for Istanbul in October 1867, summoned by the French Ambassador Bourée. He returned to Turkey in 1876 to execute the four paintings commissioned by Sultan Abdul Aziz. He was about to return to Istanbul the next year, when his patron, the Sultan, died.

In 1865, he spent some time in Cannes, painted landscapes of the Riviera. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, he returned to Italy, settling in Cavoretto, on the hills around Turin. He continued to travel, closer to his home, with trips to Venice and two sojourns in Spain in 1879 and 1883. More Alberto Pasini 

Acknowledgement: Bonhams, and others

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