Achille Koetschet – Camels Drinking In The Wadi – Oil On Panel – Signed, 1890

Achille Koetschet (1862–1895)
“Camels Drinking in the Wadi,” 1890
Oil on panel
Signed and dated lower left: A. Koetschet – 1890
Dimensions: 26 x 17.5 cm — 34.5 x 27.5 cm with frame
Condition: very good condition
Gilded wooden channel frame, decorated with foliage at the corners; in good condition, with some gilding defects

A late morning by a watering hole, somewhere in southern Algeria. Two camels have come down to drink, accompanied by a man in light-colored clothing standing near them. That is the whole story, and it is captured in just a few brushstrokes—the essence of the painting lies elsewhere.

What strikes one first is the light. Koetschet paints the sand in shades of pink, straw yellow, and off-white, with distinctly blue shadows, and he leaves the texture visible: the brushstrokes remain visible throughout, applied in small horizontal commas that follow the contours of the terrain. The water takes on the color of the sky—a deep blue in the recesses, lighter in the foreground. On the right, an ochre-and-orange cliff catches the sun; in the background, the mountain range blends into a mauve-purple hue. The sky occupies nearly half the panel, vast and empty.

This is a study painted en plein air, quickly, by a thirty-year-old painter who had clearly been influenced by the Impressionists. The small format and the panel support this interpretation: these were the materials of a traveling painter.

The date of 1890 corresponds to the artist’s stay in Africa, during which he traveled through North Africa between 1889 and 1891. These works are rare: Koetschet died at the age of thirty-three, and his career as a painter lasted only about ten years.

Condition
The panel is in very good condition, with no apparent restoration; the painting has retained all its freshness. Antique channel frame in good condition, with recent repairs and wear to the gilding.

The Artist
Achille Koetschet was born in 1862 in Saint-Imier, in the Bernese Jura, to a family originally from Delémont. He began drawing at a very young age, but his father opposed this calling and placed him in an apprenticeship as a druggist in Geneva, then at a trading firm in Marseille. When the family moved to Paris, he finally regained his freedom and enrolled at the Académie Julian in 1885. There he studied under Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre, and especially under Henri Harpignies, whose teachings on landscape painting would have a lasting influence on his work.

He exhibited in Basel as early as 1887, then at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1888 to 1891, and finally at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts from 1893 to 1895. Between 1889 and 1891, he traveled to Africa, which inspired his Orientalist landscapes. He then spent two years in Switzerland before retiring to the Pas-de-Calais, where he died in 1895. His body of work, cut short so early, remains limited in scope and is rarely found on the market.