Paul Leroy - North African Landscape With A Dromedary

Paul LEROY
Paris, 1860 – Paris, 1942
North African Landscape with a Dromedary
Oil on panel
23.5 x 32.5 cm (29 x 38 cm with frame)
Signed and inscribed in the lower right corner “Paul Leroy / to Fernand Foureau”
19th-century gilded and silvered channel frame with a laurel frieze and a pearl frieze
Very good condition
On view at the gallery

Paul Leroy was an academic painter, a student of Alexandre Cabanel, who was equally adept as a religious painter, an Orientalist painter, and a painter of southwestern France. He was particularly deeply attached to Eastern civilization. He learned Arabic, frequently traveled to North Africa—especially Algeria—and, together with Etienne Dinet and Fernand Foureau, founded the Society of French Orientalist Painters in 1893. Our painting is, in fact, inscribed “to his friend” Fernand Foureau as an “affectionate memento.” All three were great naturalist Orientalist painters and also photographers. They faithfully captured the reality of life in North Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Our painting is both a landscape and a portrait/study of a dromedary. As a naturalist painter, Paul Leroy knew how to capture the beauty of nature while remaining true to the expressions and details of the natural world. A very beautiful portrait and a landscape painted with great finesse, featuring beautiful light in shades of pink.
Paul Leroy was a “master of light” who knew how to capture the subtlety of Eastern light in particular.
The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes houses several pencil studies of dromedaries and camels. The Musée d’Orsay and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Brest have beautiful landscapes of Algeria (The Oasis of El Kantara, The Wadi at Biskra).