Alexandre Gabriel Descamps

Largely self-taught, Decamps made a tour in 1828 of exotic sites in the Middle East, Greece and North Africa.  The Orientalist subject matter that he regularly exhibited in the Salons thereafter won him the enduring respect of his peers.  An exhibition of fifty eight of his works was mounted at the Exposition Universelle of 1855, when he received, along with Delacroix and Ingres, the grande médaille d’honneur.  Among his signal achievements was the perfection of his own technique for blending watercolor and gouache with gum varnish (aquarelle vernie), thereby lending his best works on paper a richness and chromatic density approximating those of oil paintings.  The present composition, which can be dated around 1830-32, is an outstanding example of this composite technique which was particularly favored by collectors like the 4^th Marquess of Hertford, whose large collection of them can be seen today in the Wallace Collection, London.