Hunting heron, Algeria

Localisation : The Gallery of Painting
Année de création :1865
Artiste :Eugène Fromentin

Description

A painter and author, Fromentin was influenced by several trips to Algeria between 1846 and 1853. He wanted to give his work a more scientific dimension, as he planned to draw travel narratives and engravings from it. The painting shows a group hunting for heron with falcons, a practice reserved for the elite. 19th century Orientalism was more inclined to depict the colours and sensuality of an imagined exoticism. Yet here, Fromentin focuses on the immensity of the landscape, rendered by the distance between the riders, and on an overwhelming, cloudy sky that seems to project the light onto the water and blind the spectator. He seems to want to render the Orient he explored and found fascinating in an almost documentary, but nonetheless poetic, manner.