THE ORIENTALISTS
Brought up in the tradition of the Classicist school, Prosper Marilhat (1811–1847) only “formed himself” when the world of colour was discovered to him under the glowing sky of the Holy Land and Egypt, where he painted The Mosque of the Khalif Hakem, at Cairo (No. 615). Another Orientalist of great distinction, who, after being a favourite pupil of Ingres, became attracted by the fiery romanticism of Delacroix, was the Creole Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856). His works at the Louvre illustrate the earlier better than the later phase of his art. Chassériau was still entirely under the spell of Ingres when he painted, in 1844, the decoration of the Cour des Comptes, which building was destroyed under the Commune. Peace (No. 121a) is a fragment of this important decorative work, which may be said to constitute a link between Ingres and Puvis de Chavannes. The Chaste Susannah (No. 121) and the Portrait of Father Lacordaire, Dominican Preacher (No. 121b), are again clear evidence of Ingres’s influence upon Chassériau at the beginning of his brief career.
A man of profound culture and rare critical acumen, Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) was perhaps greater as a critic than as a painter. He, too, travelled repeatedly in Algeria and Egypt, where he found abundant material both for his brush and pen. He did not look upon the East with the curiosity of the traveller, nor did he let the strange land work upon his romantic imagination. His pictures, somewhat timid in technique but marked by great refinement, reveal, on the other hand, a thorough understanding of the sad monotony of the sun-parched desert, and the chivalrous, noble bearing of its Arab inhabitants. His refined talent shows to best advantage in Hawking in Algeria (No. 305).