Orientalist Oil Painting 'Crossing the River' by William Wyld

#18213: Orientalist Oil Painting 'Crossing the River' by William Wyld
By Wyld, William (British, 1806–1889)
British, 19th century
Panel: height 31cm, width 47cm, depth 1cm
Frame: height 58cm, width 76cm, depth 6cm

This oil on panel by the British Orientalist William Wyld depicts a party of travellers and their camels fording a river before a distant North African town, most probably in Algeria. The scene captures the moment a small caravan pauses at a shallow crossing.
At the left of the composition a group of figures in colourful dress gathers with their camels on the sandy near bank, while two robed riders on camelback wade out across the still water at the centre. A steep rocky bluff, crowned with trees, agave and flowering shrubs, closes the scene at the right. Beyond the far bank the eye is carried to a low horizon of pale buildings and a slender minaret, backed by blue hills under a broad, luminous sky. The handling throughout retains the light touch of Wyld's first training as a watercolourist, the figures and animals sketched with an economy that recalls his friend and mentor Horace Vernet.
Born in London, Wyld began his career as secretary to the British Consul at Calais, where he studied watercolour under Louis Francia, teacher of Richard Parkes Bonington. After some years as a wine merchant at Épernay he settled in Paris, becoming a friend of Vernet and of the French Romantic painters. In 1833 he travelled to Algeria, a journey that produced the album of lithographs Voyage pittoresque dans la Régence d'Alger exécuté en 1833, published in Paris in 1835 and dedicated to Vernet; the present picture belongs to the vein of North African subjects that occupied him thereafter. A member of the body that became the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, Wyld exhibited at the Royal Academy and the British Institution and was patronised by Queen Victoria, who invited him to Balmoral in 1852.
Signed 'W Wyld' lower right. The reverse bears the stamp of the Parisian colourman and dealer Susse Frères, indicating the picture was executed in France, together with a Mathaf Gallery label. Presented in a giltwood frame with a title plaque, 'Crossing the River'.
$22,500