Henri Langerock - Around Cairo

Henri LANGEROCK Ghent, 1830 – Marseille, 1915 Oil on canvas 46 x 37 cm (57 x 50 cm with the frame) Signed lower right “Langerock” Old stamp at the verso with an inscription Beautiful 19th century frame in gilded wood Our painting is signed “Langerock”. Henri Langerock was a Belgian painter born in Ghent but who worked in France and died in Marseille. He also traveled a lot, in France and abroad. Langerock was first known for its landscapes of France (Vosges, Picardy, Ardèche...). Then he traveled to Egypt and Brazil between 1878 and 1885, as well as to black Africa. He exhibited his traveling painter subjects at the Paris Salon until 1901. Our painting dates from this second period. A painting with a similar subject and entitled "Market in Cairo" went up for auction in 2022. It had also been estimated at 5,000 euros by the Hampel auction house in Munich. Langerock's craftsmanship is remarkable for the finesse of the drawing, the attention to detail and how the light truly sculpts the composition. It is in the tradition of the great French decorative painters of the Romantic era such as Louis Daguerre, Charles Cicéri or Charles-Marie Bouton. Moreover, Langerock also produced panoramas and dioramas. For example the panorama of the City of Rio de Janeiro (exhibited in Brussels in 1888, in Paris in 1889 and in Brazil in 1894) and the dioramas "Indian Village of South America" (exhibited in 1889 in Brussels) and " The Mysterious Continent or Stanley in the Darkness of Africa” (exhibited at the 1896 Antwerp Universal Exhibition). He also worked as a photographer, first as an assistant to Nadar before succeeding Numa Blanc in his studio at 29, boulevard des Italiens in Paris.