Details
ALBERTO PASINI (1826-1899).
View of Muscat
signed 'A.Pasini 1855' (lower right edge), and inscribed 'Port de Muscate' (lower left edge)
pencil, unframed
10½ x 15½in. (26.3 x 39.6cm.)
An important, early record of the Omani capital by one of the few professional artists to visit the area. Pasini, one of the most highly acclaimed orientalist painters working in Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century and friend of Jean-Léon Gérôme, was born in the Duchy of Parma. He trained in lithography at the Academy before moving to Paris in 1851 at the age of twenty-five. In 1855 the opportunity to travel to Arabia arose. At the height of the Crimean war, in an effort to counteract Russian influence in Persia, the diplomat Prosper Bourré led an official French mission to the court of Nasser al-Din Shah in Tehran. The written account was to be prepared by Joseph-Arthur, Comte de Gobineau (1816-1882); Pasini was invited on the journey to make the visual record.
The mission crossed to Alexandria from Marseilles and embarked at Suez on the East Indiaman Victoria bound for Bushire. They put in at Jeddah (where they met Kemal Pasha, Guardian of the Holy Shrines at Mecca and Medina), then Aden, and Muscat (where they had an audience with the Sultan, Syed Said), before crossing the Gulf. From Bushire they travelled north to Shiraz, Isfahan, and Tehran. Pasini remained at the Shah's court, before returning to Paris in 1856. In 1859 Pasini published his pictorial record of the mission: an album of 12 prints, lithographed by himself from his drawings, under the title Viaggio nell' Egitto, nella Persia et nell' Armenia, dodici vedute disegnate dal vero litografate da Alberto Pasini. Gobineau published his written account in the same year: Trois ans en Asie, de 1855 à 1858 (Paris: 1859. 8vo).
An album of 45 drawings made during the mission to Persia is owned by the Gallery of Modern Art in Turin. The album includes another, smaller view of Muscat (11.5 x 40 cms.), illustrated in the catalogue raisonné of Pasini's work (V.B.Cardosa, Pasini, Genoa, 1991, p.226, no.80).
Pasini has been frequently compared with his contemporary Orientalist Eugène Fromentin. Other contemporaries in Paris had lived in Persia, including Soltykoff, Flandin and Colombari, but none could match his experience of Jeddah, Aden and Muscat.
View of Muscat
signed 'A.Pasini 1855' (lower right edge), and inscribed 'Port de Muscate' (lower left edge)
pencil, unframed
10½ x 15½in. (26.3 x 39.6cm.)
An important, early record of the Omani capital by one of the few professional artists to visit the area. Pasini, one of the most highly acclaimed orientalist painters working in Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century and friend of Jean-Léon Gérôme, was born in the Duchy of Parma. He trained in lithography at the Academy before moving to Paris in 1851 at the age of twenty-five. In 1855 the opportunity to travel to Arabia arose. At the height of the Crimean war, in an effort to counteract Russian influence in Persia, the diplomat Prosper Bourré led an official French mission to the court of Nasser al-Din Shah in Tehran. The written account was to be prepared by Joseph-Arthur, Comte de Gobineau (1816-1882); Pasini was invited on the journey to make the visual record.
The mission crossed to Alexandria from Marseilles and embarked at Suez on the East Indiaman Victoria bound for Bushire. They put in at Jeddah (where they met Kemal Pasha, Guardian of the Holy Shrines at Mecca and Medina), then Aden, and Muscat (where they had an audience with the Sultan, Syed Said), before crossing the Gulf. From Bushire they travelled north to Shiraz, Isfahan, and Tehran. Pasini remained at the Shah's court, before returning to Paris in 1856. In 1859 Pasini published his pictorial record of the mission: an album of 12 prints, lithographed by himself from his drawings, under the title Viaggio nell' Egitto, nella Persia et nell' Armenia, dodici vedute disegnate dal vero litografate da Alberto Pasini. Gobineau published his written account in the same year: Trois ans en Asie, de 1855 à 1858 (Paris: 1859. 8vo).
An album of 45 drawings made during the mission to Persia is owned by the Gallery of Modern Art in Turin. The album includes another, smaller view of Muscat (11.5 x 40 cms.), illustrated in the catalogue raisonné of Pasini's work (V.B.Cardosa, Pasini, Genoa, 1991, p.226, no.80).
Pasini has been frequently compared with his contemporary Orientalist Eugène Fromentin. Other contemporaries in Paris had lived in Persia, including Soltykoff, Flandin and Colombari, but none could match his experience of Jeddah, Aden and Muscat.