Nasreddine (Etienne) Dinet

Christian Cherfils (1858-1926), to whom the present work is dedicated, was a French painter, writer and sociologist. He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants from 1902. Among his most famous written works was his sociological study, Bonaparte and Islam, published in the International Review of Sociology in 1912, in which he ‘demonstrated the persistence of the profound influence exerted on Bonaparte by the religion of the Prophet, which he loved.’ It may have been a contributing factor to Dinet’s own official conversion to Islam in 1913, upon which he adopted the name Nasreddine (defender of the faith).

This work on paper relates to an oil version by Dinet, exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1914, and published in Dinet's La Vie de Mohammed (1918).¹

¹ Koudir Benchikou and Denise Brahimi, La vie et œuvre de Etienne Dinet, catalogue raisonné, Paris, 1984, cat. no. 149, p. 195 (illustrated).