365 - Paul Jean-Baptiste LAZERGES (1845–1902)

Paul Jean-Baptiste LAZERGES (1845–1902) The Bedouins, 1900 Oil on wood panel Signed and dated lower left 19 x 23 cm Description: The son and student of the painter Hippolyte Lazerges—one of the leading figures in the revival of religious painting in the 19th century—Paul Jean-Baptiste Lazerges was born in Paris in 1845. He began his career around 1867 as a portrait painter, and his 1880 portrait of Sarah Bernhardt attracted attention before the Orient became the main subject of his work. His scenes of caravans, encampments, and nomadic life, as well as his views of Biskra, are part of the Orientalist tradition of southern Algeria, as exemplified before him by Eugène Fromentin and Gustave Guillaumet, and to which Étienne Dinet and Eugène Girardet also belong, from the same generation. This small panel painting, dedicated to the Bedouins, reflects the style in which he continued to work until the end of his life in Asnières in 1902.