01 Painting by the Orientalist Artists, with footnotes, 75

Léon Belly, 1827-1877, FRENCH

GAZELLE HUNT IN EGYPT, c. 1857

Oil on canvas

74 by 145cm., 29 by 57in.

Private collection

The proud stances of the camels and their riders, the fluttering robes, bright sun, and vivid colours combine to make this a work of true bravura, and bear testimony to Belly's genius at capturing the stark light and desert winds of the Egyptian Sinai. 


Belly travelled to Egypt three times, in 1850, 1856, and 1857. The Gazelle Hunt was most likely worked up from sketches Belly made in 1856 during his excursion into the Sinai desert with fellow painters Narcisse Berchère and Jean-Léon Gérôme. More on this painting

Léon Auguste Adolphe Belly (1827–1877) was a French landscape painter. He was born at St. Omer, in 1827. He studied under Troyon, and in 1849 visited Barbizon where he came under the influence of Théodore Rousseau.

In 1850–1 he travelled to Greece, Syria, and the Black Sea. In 1853 he made his debut at the Paris Salon, exhibiting four landscapes of Nablus and Beirut, and of the shores of the Dead Sea, which attracted critical acclaim. In 1855–6 he visited Egypt, travelling up the Nile in the company of another painter, Edouard Imer. A second trip to Egypt in 1856 was largely spent making studies for his painting Pilgrims going to Mecca, now in the Musée d'Orsay.

As well as his paintings of Middle Eastern subjects he painted portraits and landscapes of Normandy and the Sologne throughout his career, and in 1867 bought land at Montauban. He died in Paris in 1877. More on Léon Auguste Adolphe Belly

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