The Mosque
تاريخ الاضافة
17/07/2019
نوع المحتوى
Art And Craft
Category
Paintings
الرابط للمحتوى
Subject Area
Architecture
الوصف
Date Created: 1881
Provenance: Donated by the Biddle Foundation in memory of
Margaret Biddle, 1957
Physical Dimensions: w920 x h730 cm
Original Title: La Mosquée
Type: Oil on canvas
Rights: © RMN (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski
We do not know which festival Renoir was
representing here in Algiers, set in the
ancient Turkish ramparts destroyed several decades earlier by the French army.
The scene is swarming with people, a happy crowd grouped around five musicians.
In the distance, the cupolas and minarets of the Kasbah, appear, overlooking
the blue water of the Mediterranean Sea.
For European painters, depicting Algerian customs and
costumes enabled them to evoke another world, far from Europe. Images of
ceremonies or festivals were particularly popular, especially if they included
a musical element.
The rapid brushwork, with impasto in parts, has all the freedom of the Impressionists' style. In certain parts, people whose faces are not visible are replaced by simple dashes of color, superimposed with vivacity. The particularly bold composition makes it difficult to recognize the place where this gathering is being held. Still the visible details of the costumes (turbans), the white buildings and the vegetation take us into the unfamiliar atmosphere of the Orient. Here Renoir presents us with a pleasant, happy scene, a contrast to those austere scenes of a hostile desert or bloody combats. It is an original orientalism, filtered through the pictorial characteristics of Impressionism.
Files
Type of Work:
Artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir