PASADIZO

Christa Zaat

Eugène-Alexis Girardet (French painter) 1853 - 1907
Passage à Bou Saada, s.d.
oil on canvas
102 x 82.5 cm. (40¼ x 32½ in.)
signed Eugène Girardet lower right
private collection

Catalogue Note
Girardet hailed from an artistic Swiss Huguenot family, and even before his teacher Jean-Léon Gérôme encouraged him to visit the Orient he had long had the travel bug from his uncles Karl and Edouard, who had travelled to and painted Egypt; and from his father Paul, who had engraved episodes of the colonial war in Algeria after Horace Vernet. In 1874, he left for Morocco, then travelled to Tunisia and Algeria, for which he developed a particular fondness. He spent subsequent visits in Algiers and Boghari, but above all in El Kantara and Bou-Saâda, where he met Etienne Dinet (lots 9, 12, 14), who later made the oasis his home. Girardet painted simple everyday scenes like the present one: herds of goats in the dust, prayers in the desert, laundresses in the wadi, people going about their business among the red stone walls of the villages.