83 - Ⓟ MARIUS PERRET (1853–1900)

Ⓟ MARIUS PERRET (1853–1900) “Bonzerie in Phnom Penh,” 1899 Pastel on paper Signed, inscribed, and dated lower left 26.4 x 37.8 cm Born in Moulins in 1853, Marius Perret enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the early 1880s and became a student of the painter Alexandre Cabanel. A traveler, he quickly specialized—following a stay of several years in North Africa—in Orientalist landscapes and seascapes, participating in 1893 in the first Salon of the Society of French Orientalist Painters. He then set off for Asia following a request made by the Minister of Colonies, André Lebon, in March 1898, in which Lebon asked him to undertake a mission “in a colony that would particularly interest you and for which you would wish to promote awareness through images,” suggesting Asia and the Far East. This journey, which began aboard the ocean liner Océanien, which departed for Saigon on January 22, 1899, took him notably to Vietnam and Cambodia, during which time he created the work before us. Perret died of an illness in the years that followed, in Java.