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拍品專文
As maintained by Dr Gerald Ackerman, this striking version of Arnaute avec deux chiens whippets was painted circa the years 1870-1. In light of this, it is most likely that Gérôme executed this work either at his family home in Bougival, where he and his family had moved to safety during the siege of Paris or during his time in London, while he had been exhibiting at the Royal Academy. Painted with Gérôme's instinctive attention to detail, Arnaute avec deux chiens whippets is an impressive example of the same model standing in a street or before a building with two whippets, usually one black and one white. This imposing figure is a fine-looking version of the Bachi-Bouzouk character, so often found in Gérôme's oeuvre such as in the famous works of Bachi-Bouzouk et son chien (Private collection), Arnaute de Caire (Collectin Nadj, c/o Mathaf Gallery, London) and Bachi-Bouzouk chantant (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore).
Bachi-Bouzouk was "...…the name given to a kind of military reserve who volunteered for combat in such emergencies as the Crimean War. These irregular troops, who acquired an exaggerated reputation for ferocity and cruelty toward the civil population, were armed and maintained by the government and were found to be most useful in reconnaissance work in outpost duty. Unlike the regular, disciplined Turkish troops, they received no pay and wore no special uniforms." (Charles Sterling and Margaretta M. Salinger, French Drawings: A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1966, vol. II, p. 176). In the present work, the impressive young man appears to be an Albanian or Arnavut (at that time Albania was part of the Ottoman Empire) in the service of the Ottoman Turks, on duty in a Syrian street. Complete with Albanian skirt and Arab head-dress, and bearing a Turkish sword or yatagn, Gérôme has infused this arresting figure with his faithful hunting dogs, with an air of almost neo-classical authority and stature.
Bachi-Bouzouk was "...…the name given to a kind of military reserve who volunteered for combat in such emergencies as the Crimean War. These irregular troops, who acquired an exaggerated reputation for ferocity and cruelty toward the civil population, were armed and maintained by the government and were found to be most useful in reconnaissance work in outpost duty. Unlike the regular, disciplined Turkish troops, they received no pay and wore no special uniforms." (Charles Sterling and Margaretta M. Salinger, French Drawings: A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1966, vol. II, p. 176). In the present work, the impressive young man appears to be an Albanian or Arnavut (at that time Albania was part of the Ottoman Empire) in the service of the Ottoman Turks, on duty in a Syrian street. Complete with Albanian skirt and Arab head-dress, and bearing a Turkish sword or yatagn, Gérôme has infused this arresting figure with his faithful hunting dogs, with an air of almost neo-classical authority and stature.