FABIO FABBI (ITALIAN, 1861 - 1946) ORIENTALIST PAINTING, oil on canvas, depicting a beaded and bejeweled dancer on a Middle Eastern street holding a palm frond aloft and dressed in flowing white dress accented with colorful head scarf and sash tied at waist. She performs on a Persian carpet while a woman, a musician, and a man smoking a hookah at a café casually observe her movements. In period carved and gilded frame that bears old framer's label for "The Belnord Art Gallery / New York". Late 19th century. 23" x 16" sight, 34" x 27 1/2" overall. Provenance: Collection of Max and Gloria Mayo of Ivy, VA.
Catalogue Note: Fabio Fabbi is considered to be one of the finest European Orientalist painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Bologna in 1861, he studied at the Academia in Florence in 1880 and went on to become a professor and eventual president of the Academy. He was also admitted to the Academia in Bologna and served as a member and president of this institution during his lifetime as well. Fabbi achieved great success as a painter of Orientalist subjects, often depicting beautiful, scantily clad women in exotic Middle Eastern locales such as Cairo. His fame at the end of the 19th century was such that he received the Cavaliere della Corona d'Italia in 1898, one of Italy's highest honors. A sculptor and illustrator in addition to a painter, Fabbi also worked for newspapers and illustrated over 100 books during his lifetime.
This evocative painting exhibits great skill and contains all of the elements that are most desirable in Fabbi's work. Conjuring a seductive mood on a sleepy Middle Eastern back street, Fabbi uses an impressionistic background with selective detail to the foreground and figures as well as beautiful elements of impasto to the polychrome, textured surfaces such as the dancer's accoutrements and the carpets in the scene.

Fine condition on original stretchers and in period, possibly original frame. Slight craquelure and old puncture repair and crude retouching to small section (1 1/2" L) of surface in upper left quadrant, and other areas of retouch throughout.