ÁFRICA LATENTE | Christa Zaat

Christa Zaat



Georges Gasté (French painter and photographer) 1869 - 1910
Portrait of a Woman, 1902
oil on canvas
62 x 52 cm. (24.41 x 20.5 in.)
signed and inscribed 'C.Georges Gaste/le Caire 1902' and further inscribed in Arabic (upper right)
private collection

Gasté was born on August 30, 1869 to his parents at 3, rue du Gindre in the 6th borough of Paris. His father, Henry Gasté (1845-1871), a native of Laval, was an art dealer, and was the son of Pierre Gasté (1820-1884) (Georges Gasté's grandfather) who is also an art dealer himself. Georges Gasté's inclination to oriental pictorial art was already apparent at an early age up to until the premature death of his father in 1871.
Georges Gasté studied art in Paris while spending time at the workshops of painters such as Alexandre Cabanel and Raphaël Collin. Fascinated by the Orient, Gasté traveled extensively through North Africa, including places such as Algeria, Egypt and Palestine from 1892 to 1908. The faces of the inhabitants of these regions fascinated him, and he produced many portrait paintings of them. Eager to discover new horizons, Gasté sailed for India and Ceylon, which for him became a new source of inspiration for his paintings. He died of illness in 1910 while in Madurai, India.
In 2013, an exhibition entitled Georges Gasté, un Orient d’ombre et de lumière (literally "Georges Gasté, an East[ern place made up] of light and shadow"), an exhibition that has been dedicated to the Montparnasse museum in Paris.