Paul LEROY - North African Landscape with a Dromedary

Paul LEROY
Paris, 1860 - Paris, 1942
North African Landscape with a Dromedary
Oil on panel
23.5 x 32.5 cm (29 x 38 cm with frame)
Signed and dedicated lower right "Paul Leroy / to Fernand Foureau"
19th-century gilt and silvered fluted frame with laurel and pearl friezes
Very good condition
Viewable at the gallery

Paul Leroy was an academic painter, a student of Alexandre Cabanel, who was also a religious painter, an Orientalist painter, and a painter of Southwest France. He was particularly drawn to Oriental civilization. He learned Arabic, frequently traveled to North Africa—especially Algeria—and founded the Society of French Orientalist Painters in 1893 with Étienne Dinet and Fernand Foureau. Our painting is dedicated "to his friend" Fernand Foureau in "affectionate remembrance." The three were great naturalist Orientalist painters and also photographers. They faithfully captured the reality of life in North Africa at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.
Our painting is both a landscape and a portrait/study of a dromedary. As a naturalist painter, Paul Leroy knew how to render the beauty of nature while respecting the truth of expressions and details. A very beautiful portrait and landscape painted with great finesse and a lovely pinkish light.

Paul Leroy was a "master of light" who knew how to capture the subtlety of light, particularly in the Orient.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Rennes holds several pencil studies of dromedaries and camels. The Musée d'Orsay and the Museum of Fine Arts in Brest possess beautiful landscapes of Algeria (the El Kantara Oasis, the wadi at Biskra).

Ref: ZL65XFA277