Gustave Bourgain - View Of A Street In Cairo

Gustave BOURGAIN Paris, 1856 - Paris, 1921 Oil on paper 33 x 24 cm (44 x 35cm with frame) Signed above right "G. Bourgain" Pupil of Jean-Léon Gérôme, Gustave Bourgain exhibited at the show in 1880. He was attached to the newspaper L'illustration and thus left with the Alexandrian expedition in 1882 and for the coronation of Tsar Alexander III in Russia in 1883. A great lover of navigation and fishing, he became an official painter of the navy in 1883 and painted many scenes of life on French state ships. He also painted views of his journeys to the East. Our painting is a view of Cairo which perhaps dates from his stay in Egypt in the 1880s. It is a scene from life in Cairo with locals walking on the street and with the view of a beautiful palace. This study was used to paint the large painting exhibited at the Salon of French Artists in Paris by Bourgain in 1912 "Napoleon's entry into Cairo on July 23, 1798" and sold for sale at Sotheby's New York on February 22, 1989 (sold for 90,000 $ hammer). We clearly recognize the architecture of the beautiful palace on the right and the shooting. In the composition of 1912, Bourgain added characters who move aside to let Bonaparte pass on horseback and his suite and of course provide the details required by a large composition (1.50m by 1.20m). But our small canvas has the freshness of a sketch probably made on the spot as shown by the traces of thumbtacks in the canvas that can be distinguished on the sides and parts more sketched than others.