.jpg "Before a Mosque by Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps - Architecture, Landscape Paintings from Hermitage Museum")
Painting Detail
Before a MosqueArtist: Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps
Medium: Painting, Oil on panel, 41x30.5 cm
Date: c. 1868
Genre: Architecture, Landscape
Source: Anichkov Palace, Leningrad, 1929
Decamps was one of the first 19th-century French artists to travel through the countries of the Orient. In 1828 he visited North Africa and Asia Minor, from where he brought back numerous studies which he then used throughout his life in creating landscapes and genre paintings. Before a Mosque is a typical example of his orientalizing works, with its blindingly bright sun, sharp contrasts of light and shade, and generalised treatment of the figures.