‘Arab Horsemen Crossing a River’, Orientalist Oil Painting by Georges Washington

#18212: ‘Arab Horsemen Crossing a River’, an Orientalist Oil Painting by Georges Washington
French, 19th Century
Canvas: height 47cm, width 61cm, depth 2cm
Frame: height 74cm, width 89cm, depth 6cm

This animated oil on canvas by the Marseille-born painter Georges Washington shows a caravan fording a river in open country, beneath the mountains of North Africa.
At the right a group of horsemen halts on the stony bank, their horses shifting on the loose ground. One rider, in a white turban and a green and crimson jacket, raises a long musket. Beside him are a rider in red on a grey and another in a pale burnous carrying a rifle across the saddle. A man on foot in a white robe turns towards them with an arm raised, directing the party.
In the middle distance the caravan is already in the water, with figures wading, a laden donkey being led across and a rider in a white headcloth following behind. At the left two women in white stand at the edge of the stream with a child crouching beside them. Beyond the crossing the land rises through dark scrub and scattered trees to a range of blue-grey mountains, the peaks catching the light under a wide sky of pale cloud.
The handling is fluid and rapid. The foreground figures and horses are drawn with precision, with the anatomy of the animals closely observed. The water is worked in short broken strokes of blue and white, and the middle-distance crowd is suggested with flecks of pigment rather than described. A warm, low-keyed palette holds the composition together, against which the reds and whites of the costumes register sharply.
The painting is signed at the lower left ‘G. Washington’. It is presented in a giltwood frame incised with arabesque ornament and fitted with a title plaque reading ‘Arab Horsemen crossing a River’. A Mathaf Gallery label is on the reverse.
Georges Washington (1827–1910) was born in Marseille and trained in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts under the history painter François-Édouard Picot. Finding academic instruction restrictive, he travelled to North Africa, and the journey determined his career. From his Salon debut he showed North African subjects almost exclusively, chiefly views of Algeria (the Sahara, Constantine, Kabylia and El-Kantara) and of Morocco. He also painted halts of horsemen, fantasias, encampments and hunting scenes, and horses remain central to his work throughout. His painting owes much to Delacroix and Eugène Fromentin. He married into a family of painters: his father-in-law was the battle painter Henri Philippoteaux.
Examples of his work are held in the museums of Dunkerque, Limoges, Sète, Angers and Dijon. A closely related subject, ‘Cavaliers kabyles à l’abreuvoir’, is in the collection at Angers.
$37,500