Germain Fabius Brest

Acquired by the father of the present owner in 1949

This condition report has been provided by Hamish Dewar, Hamish Dewar Ltd. Fine Art Conservation, 14 Masons Yard, Duke Street, St James's, London SW1Y 6BU. The canvas has an area of repair on the reverse where patches have been removed and replaced with adhesive. There are also two small patches. The area of repair measures approximately 25 x 10cm and corresponds to an area of retouching running down the left side of the composition. There are other scattered retouchings. The paint surface also has a layer of wax varnish which makes the surface difficult to read. There are areas of abrasion around the line of repair, particularly in the lower left of the composition. It would be possible and desirable to reduce the extent of the retouching and remove the wax varnish layers, but to do this the canvas would require lining.
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Encouraged by his teacher in Marseille, Emile Loubon, Fabius Brest spent four years, from 1855 until 1859, living in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), recording in a series of paintings views of Constantinople, the surrounding countryside, and the Black Sea coast. The time he spent there continued to inspire his work for the rest of his career, and provided the subjects for many of his Salon submissions throughout the 1860s and 1870s.

Today, Fabius Brest is best known for his paintings of the streets and squares of Constantinople. For the present work, Fabius Brest has chosen to depict on an unusually large scale a remarkably informal scene set in a quiet street on a hot summer's afternoon - perhaps the better to describe the daily life of the townspeople. A melon seller plies his trade in the shade of a tree in the foreground, and on the right traders return from the market with their mules, their baskets now empty. In the background, a group of men converse outside a kief or café.