CHARLES THÉODORE FRÈRE | DESERT ENCAMPMENT

Possibly, Sale: Sotheby's, New York, 11 February 1981, lot 54

The Fine Art Society, London

Mathaf Gallery, London (by 1983)

Purchased from the above 

Caroline Juler, Najd Collection of Orientalist Paintings, London, 1991, p. 114, catalogued & illustrated

London, Mathaf Gallery, Summer Exhibition, Important Orientalist Paintings of the 19th Century, 1983, illustrated in the catalogue

A camel caravan has made camp for the night on the edge of an oasis. The travellers have pitched their tents and settled down in groups around their fires to boil water for tea and cook the evening meal. They are backlit by the last rays of sun sinking behind the distant horizon. Writer, poet, painter, and art critic, Théophile Gautier, an experienced traveller himself, noted that Frère's paintings exuded an authenticity that could only have come from firsthand experience of the culture and scenes he encountered. 

A larger version of this composition, formerly in the Najd Collection, was sold in these rooms on 22 October 2019.