French school of the first half of the 19th century.
"Orientalist scene".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Signed "A. Garneray" in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 79 x 62 cm; 94 x 78 cm (frame).
The painter of this work recreates a river scene with the city of Istanbul in the background. A group of people are resting with their animals beside the calm waters of a stream, on a large pedestal that refers to an ancient stone construction, now lost. The lush greenery that emanates from the waters, with tall palms and dense trees, provides the ideal oasis for the sheep to feed and shelter from the intense sun that bathes the scene. The final mosque, with its dome and two minarets, indicates that we are most probably in a place close to the city of Istanbul.
The work belongs to the Orientalist school, which emerged in the 19th century as a consequence of the Romantic spirit of flight in time and space. The first Orientalists sought to reflect the lost, the unattainable, in a dramatic journey destined from the outset to fail. Like Flaubert in "Salambo", painters painted detailed portraits of the Orient and imagined pasts, recreated down to the last millimetre but ultimately unknown and idealised. During the second half of the 19th century, however, many of the painters who travelled to the Middle East in search of this invented reality discovered a different and new country, which stood out with its peculiarities above the clichés and prejudices of Europeans. Thus, this new school of Orientalism left behind the beautiful odalisques, harems and slave markets to paint nothing more than what they saw, the real East in all its everyday dimensions. Along with the change of vision came a technical and formal change; since it was no longer a question of recreating an imagined world in all its details, the brushstroke became more impressionistic, and the artists focused less on depicting types and customs than on faithfully reflecting the atmosphere of the place, the very identity of the North African populations.