Marie Lucas-Robiquet

Rachel Liberman, Paris

Lucas-Robiquet, along with Henriette Browne, is one of the very few French female Orientalist painters who actually travelled to the region to paint what she saw at first hand. She received her artistic training in the studio of Félix-Joseph Barrias in Paris, and in 1891 married Maurice Lucas, an officer in the French colonial army in Algeria, whom she accompanied to Constantine, the capital of eastern Algeria. Making this her base, she explored the surrounding countryside and Bedouin life which she painted in plein air, in her inimitable luminist-impressionistic style. Her Orientalist period was short-lived however, as her husband died four years later and she returned to France. She exhibited at the Salon of the Society of French Artists from 1892, and went on to have a long career, from 1910 focusing primarily on portraiture and genre scenes set in Brittany, but it is for her vibrantly authentic Orientalist works that she is best remembered.

This work reprises a larger version in the Museum of Fine Arts of Nancy, titled Restaurant en plein vent à Ain-Sefra (Inv. 1129)