Girardet 'studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme, who encouraged him to visit the Orient, although he already had travel fever from listening to the stories of his uncles' journeys. In 1874, he left for Morocco and Algeria through Spain. The first contact with the Muslim world enchanted him and from then on, he painted Orientalist pictures. During the 1870s, he returned several times to North Africa, with a visit, in 1877, to Tunisia. Girardet was particularly attracted to Algeria, which he visited on many occasions, not just to collect sufficient studies and then return, but to savour the landscape and to observe and participate in the life. Some of these stays were spent in Algiers and boghari, but above all in El Kantara and Bou-Saâda, where he met Etienne Dinet (see lot 23), who later made the oasis a second home.' L. Thornton, The Orientalists Painter-Travellers, 1828-1908, Paris, 1983, p. 182