Before a Mosque in Cairo
by DECAMPS, Alexandre Gabriel, Oil on panel, 41 x 31 cm
Eastern exotica was in great demand among connoisseurs of the fine arts. In painting, its spectrum ranged from Romantic fantasies to banal topographic views to entertaining genre scenes. Decamps stood somewhere in the middle. A powerful painter with a mastery of colour, he did not go beyond recording the daily life and atmosphere of the East, albeit in a highly convincing manner.