.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The most important and gifted of the Italian Orientalist painters, Alberto Pasini spent several years in travelling to Persia, Egypt and, above all, Istanbul. Although his contemporaries thought of him as a talented landscape and architectural painter, Pasini also excelled at busy scenes of everyday life. He trained in lithography at the Academy in Parma before moving to Paris in 1851 at the age of twenty-five. He was influenced by Théodore Rousseau and Eugène Fromentin in the 1850s, but went on to develop his own distinctive style. The key attraction of Pasini is his lively depiction of ordinary citizens, romanticized to some extent, but full of accurate detail. Markets and café scenes were a particular favourite of his.
'Mon cher Pasini, ne négligez pas de prendre finement et scrupuleusement les détails des choses, on regrette cela quand on ne l’a pas fait sur place…ce qui est fait tout simplement est toujours jeune et de toute manière l’art la meilleure’ (Théodore Chassériau to Alberto Pasini, October 1855)
Pasini's natural talents as a draughtsman and his sensitivity to local customs radiate through the present work. The artist eschewed the exotic style of Orientalism for a more documentary approach to the subject, derived from countless plein-air studies of figures, architecture, and sites of public gathering. His works are notable for their masterful rendition of light and shadow.
The present drawing depicts a café in Khān el-Khalilī, nowadays considered to be the most important souk in Cairo. The artist here excels in rendering the contrast between the sunlit facades and the strongly shaded porticos. The compositions is entirely filled with architecture, avoiding a horizon line. The artist captures the scene with his typical photographic attention to detail: the nuanced gestures and expressions of the different clusters of people engaged in conversation or simply enjoying a rest in the shade of the café, all provide a sense of extraordinary immediacy.
'Mon cher Pasini, ne négligez pas de prendre finement et scrupuleusement les détails des choses, on regrette cela quand on ne l’a pas fait sur place…ce qui est fait tout simplement est toujours jeune et de toute manière l’art la meilleure’ (Théodore Chassériau to Alberto Pasini, October 1855)
Pasini's natural talents as a draughtsman and his sensitivity to local customs radiate through the present work. The artist eschewed the exotic style of Orientalism for a more documentary approach to the subject, derived from countless plein-air studies of figures, architecture, and sites of public gathering. His works are notable for their masterful rendition of light and shadow.
The present drawing depicts a café in Khān el-Khalilī, nowadays considered to be the most important souk in Cairo. The artist here excels in rendering the contrast between the sunlit facades and the strongly shaded porticos. The compositions is entirely filled with architecture, avoiding a horizon line. The artist captures the scene with his typical photographic attention to detail: the nuanced gestures and expressions of the different clusters of people engaged in conversation or simply enjoying a rest in the shade of the café, all provide a sense of extraordinary immediacy.