édouard Herzig, Orientalist Watercolor, Algeria, Caricature

Watercolor caricature on paper with an Orientalist theme set in Algeria. The image depicts a chase and confrontation between two soldiers mocking a draped woman, almost like a comic strip before its time. Size: 48.5 x 30 cm. Good overall condition, some foxing. Signed lower right. Édouard Herzig, born December 23, 1860, in Neuchâtel and died in Algiers on October 3, 1926, was a French painter and caricaturist of Swiss origin. He prepared for teaching and attended the teacher training college in Neuchâtel, but his taste for independence and adventure led him to Marseille, where he embarked for Algeria in 1883, at the age of 23. He settled in Kabylia, where he became a clerk at the justice of the peace court in Tizi Ouzou. It was there that he met the young painter Azouaou Mammeri, whom he would later mentor. After moving to Algiers, he attended the School of Fine Arts. For the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition, he provided three slide shows, a popular format at the time (one on Algiers, one on Kabylia, and one on the southern Sahara), and he dedicated his life to defending Algerian crafts and preserving traditional art. In 1898-1899, he contributed to the illustrated supplement of Max Régis's L'Antijuif algérien (The Algerian Anti-Jew), producing numerous anti-Semitic caricatures. He settled in Paris in 1914 to oversee his daughters' education at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, before returning to Algeria in 1918. His work was unanimously acclaimed and popularized at the 1925 Paris Exposition of Decorative Arts (Algerian pavilion). He was the father of Fernande Herzig and Yvonne Kleiss-Herzig (1895-1968), both renowned painters.