An inexhaustible source of inspiration for the Western painters:
Passages translated from the book "Algérie : l'Autre Rive"
With the search of the East and its mysteries, sun and light, the Western artists plowed across the Raising or the North Africa.
At 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, it is, in fact, an exceptional vision and a discovery of another world, of another civilization.
Algeria always fascinated the foreigners who knew it causing enthusiasm and covetousnesses, conquests and occupations.
But pacifist and sincere, many of artists had as weapons only their pencils and brushes. An inexhaustible source of inspiration allowed tens of painters come from the four corners from the sphere to immortalize the "extraordinary" diversity of the sites and atmospheres "
The artists French reporters of the "conquest" of 1830 of Horace VERNET with RAFFET like those more curious and neutral from Switzerland, from Germany or the United Kingdom, William Wyld, Adolph Otth or Weidenmann make known the littoral and the Sahel thanks to their studies, the watercolours, engravings and fabrics of a scientific or doctrinary interest.
Fulgurating the appearance of the "women of Algiers" into 1832 of Delacroix announces the Masters Chassériau, Fromentin or Chataud which make Algeria the ground of election of the painters. In the years 1860 some launch out in the study of the south and the nomads.
Others enamored of authenticity and freedom completely began such Dinet which converts has the Islam or Verschafelt which married a Moslem woman. All were established in Boussaâda, illustrating the Algerian life Boussaâda and Biskra were the accessible oases for many painters French orientalists and American (Bridgman, Thericat, Muller or Edvin Lord Weeks).
One discovers the fairyhood of the light, space, imagination, the dance and the colors sharp as well of the Mediterranean dimension as of Ksours to the edge of the desert vastnesses.
The homage to the capital El Djezair and the Algerian landscapes is paid by many artists with their sensitivity of poet. Thus Eugene Fromentin described and painted "the large mystic and much of the charm disappeared" from this nature and these archaeological treasures.
Also let us point out the strange one enchantment caused by the Kasbah and the wearing of Algiers which inspires so many artists.
Jules Maggy with his navy exposed to the museum of beautiful arts of Algiers, Poulard, Caillet or American Bridgman among so many others, devoted many tables to the called Mediterranean city it "La Bien Gardee".
With the softness of their climate, Tlemcen, Annaba or Bejaia attract the Italians, Algiers the Anglo-Saxons.
From 1907 a villa "Médicis" in Algiers, the Adeltif villa will annually accomodate artists of France until 1960: Couvy, Squares, Bouviolle, De Buzon, Bouchard or Hamburg is remained there.
The shortly after the second world war, Algeria will continue to fascinate the European painters but the tinted orientalism of exoticism of yesteryear is not any more setting.
The new artistic tendencies express in another way this extraordinary attraction like Dubuffet masterfully made, the initiator of rough art with his fabric entitled "To paint in Arabic".
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