Louis Comfort Tiffany (American 1848-1933) "Street Scene in Algiers" Watercolor on paper. 13 13/16 inches x 21 1/4 inches (35 x 54 cm.). c. 1880. unsigned. Provenance: Julia Knox Wakeman Tiffany, daughter of the artist; Mary Parker Weaver Tiffany, granddaughter of the artist. This painting is pictured on pg. 43 of "Louis C. Tiffany, The Garden Museum Collection". During his busy travel and exhibition schedule in the 1870s and 1880s, Tiffany made several trips to Spain, from where he crossed to North Africa. This composition provides a warm and intimate personal recollection of one of those visits in its depiction of a typical kasbah scene in the Algerian capital. In its subtle modulation of a narrow range of colors, the painting reveals the influence of Tiffany's earliest mentor, George Inness, a tonalist who sought to evoke a poetic mood in his landscapes by the understated interplay of light and shadow. Here, the jumbled displays of fruit, baskets, woven fabrics, and the turbans of the passers-by, highlighted by the slanting rays of the sun, serve as jewel-like spot colors. 'Rich in architectural design is "A Street Scene in Algiers," with its groups of picturesque Arabs and fascinating shops with their goods displayed outdoors in the brilliant sunlight of the colorful tropics. It is an achievement to paint such a setting, obtaining the true values of color and the thousand-and-one tones in shadow, half shadow and cast shadow, produced in a climate of intense light. In an analysis of this painting, we cannot but be impressed with the artist's surety and knowledge in grasping the various requirements: the difficult lines of the archway, the perspective, the ornamental details- all beautifully drawn and rendered; but the really amazing feature is the attention to and correctness of detail in so many articles, each drawn with the same time, embodying that breadth of effect which melts into the whole, without disturbing insistence.'Commentary on Street scene in Algiers by Rene DeQuelin, in 'A Many-sided Creator of the Beautiful', Arts and Decoration, 17 (July 1922), p.177.