Louis-françois Cassas - Characters In An Arcadian Scene

FIGURES IN AN ARCADIAN SCENE
Pen & black ink and pencil with watercolour
21 x 29.3 cm

The French painter and architect Louis-François Cassas (1756-1827) was a member of the retinue of the French ambassador to the Ottoman court, Count Marie Gabriel August de Choiseul-Gouffier. Commissioned by the ambassador, he travelled from 1784 to 1787 to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Cyprus, and Asia Minor and drew ancient sites, many of which had never before been recorded. An earlier commission in 1782 was for a series of views of the Istrian and Dalmatian coast. These drawings were reproduced in engraving in his book Voyage pittoresque et historique de l'Istrie et de la Damatie(Paris, 1802). Cassas returned to Paris in 1792. After the Revolution he became drawing professor at the Gobelins Tapestry Manufactory, where he remained until his death.