Eugène FLANDIN (Naples 1809- Tours 1889)

Eugène FLANDIN (Naples 1809- Tours 1889)

Khan on tour

Watercolor and white gouache highlights 24.4 x 32 cm Signed lower right Eug Flandin Provenance : Jean-Charles Tauzin Collection (1889-1957) Eugène Flandin was an Orientalist painter born in Naples in 1809, who traveled extensively throughout his life. His travels left behind a body of descriptive work for scientific purposes, for which he was awarded the Légion d'honneur in 1842. In particular, he visited Algeria, Persia, Turkey and Mesopotamia. From his sojourns, he brought back a large number of sketches of all kinds, the fruit of his observations of the landscapes, history, arts and lifestyles of the countries he discovered. This painting, "Khan on a Journey", bears witness to his interest and taste for depicting scenes from the daily life of the peoples he encountered, to which few Westerners had access at the time. He remains influenced by the pictorial romanticism of his contemporaries, while remaining attached to the realism of detail, as evidenced by the presence of the "ghalian" (narghile), smoked by the lord on horseback.