Orientalist Oil Painting of an Algerian Caravan by François Lauret

18190: Orientalist Oil Painting of an Algerian Caravan by François Lauret
By Lauret, François (French, 1820–1868)
French, dated 1864
Canvas: height 59cm, width 92cm, depth 2cm
Frame: height 84cm, width 117cm, depth 10cm

This Orientalist scene by the French painter François Lauret shows a caravan making its way along a track in the countryside outside Algiers. Beneath a broad pale sky, a train of camels carries veiled women and robed riders in single file across the high ground, one woman shielding an infant in her arms, another raising a switch as the animals bray and press forward along the path. A barefoot driver strides ahead at the left with his staff shouldered, while at the right a bearded man in a blue striped robe leads a child and an older, stooping figure down the slope. In the foreground a lean dog bounds across the scrub with its mouth open, giving the procession a note of movement.

Beyond the caravan the composition opens onto a wide prospect. A large agave breaks the line of the ochre bank at the right, its blue-grey blades silhouetted against the sky, while a row of tents and further travellers recede towards a low ridge in the distance. At the far left the ground falls away sharply, the land dissolving into a haze of blue with the pale forms of distant mountains beyond. The warm browns and ochres of the sunlit path and the animals' hides are set against the cool blues of the sky and the horizon, in a palette that records the particular clarity of the North African light.

Algiers and its surrounding countryside drew French artists in growing numbers following the colonisation of Algeria from 1830, and scenes of caravans, nomadic life and open landscape became a mainstay of nineteenth-century Orientalist painting. Works of this kind appealed to metropolitan audiences and Salon visitors, drawn to the unfamiliarity of daily life in the Maghreb.

Born at Pignans in the Var, Lauret trained alongside his elder brother, the painter Emmanuel-Joseph Lauret, and studied under Clérian at Aix before entering the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. He joined his brother in Algeria around the middle of the century and settled into the life of the colony, devoting himself to the Algerian landscape and to scenes of everyday life, from shepherds and their herds to nomadic encampments and travelling caravans. He exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon, and works of this type, signed and inscribed 'Alger', belong to the heart of his output. The painting is executed in oil on paper laid to canvas, signed, situated and dated lower right, 'Lauret. Alger. 1864', and is presented in a giltwood frame.

$67,500