Lot Essay
Influenced by his father Hippolyte (see lots 28 and 73), Paul Lazerges travelled to Egypt and Tunisia and often stayed in Algeria.
'Lazerges specialised in camels, the most commonly-seen animal in North Africa, but one that artists had always found difficult to paint. He shows them carrying heavy, striped sacks containing the provisions and tents of tribes on the move, transporting swaying palanquins concealing the women from curious eyes, moving slowly along narrow paths under the sun, or resting during a moonlight halt. These were painted primarily in El Kantara, around Biskra and in the region of Bou Saada, the favourite places in Southeastern Algeria during the last quarter of the nineteenth century for such artists as Guillaumet (lot 44), Landelle (lot 30), Leroy, Dinet (lot 23) and Girardet (lot 53). The silent tribesmen in Lazerges' paintings, often barefooted, with ragged burnous and worn faces, are only too real documents testifying to the impoverishment of many Algerians' (L. Thornton, The Orientalists Painter-Travellers 1828-1908, Paris, 1983, p. 208)
'Lazerges specialised in camels, the most commonly-seen animal in North Africa, but one that artists had always found difficult to paint. He shows them carrying heavy, striped sacks containing the provisions and tents of tribes on the move, transporting swaying palanquins concealing the women from curious eyes, moving slowly along narrow paths under the sun, or resting during a moonlight halt. These were painted primarily in El Kantara, around Biskra and in the region of Bou Saada, the favourite places in Southeastern Algeria during the last quarter of the nineteenth century for such artists as Guillaumet (lot 44), Landelle (lot 30), Leroy, Dinet (lot 23) and Girardet (lot 53). The silent tribesmen in Lazerges' paintings, often barefooted, with ragged burnous and worn faces, are only too real documents testifying to the impoverishment of many Algerians' (L. Thornton, The Orientalists Painter-Travellers 1828-1908, Paris, 1983, p. 208)