The Nile at Aswan, Egypt
Oil on canvas mounted on cardboard
Signed lower left
32,5 x 40,5 cm
Provenance:
- Versailles, Hôtel Rameau, 31/05/1972, reproduced under n°177
- Collection Paul-Louis Weiller
Exhibition:
"Contemporary French Paintings", Cairo, Museum of Modern Art, 1935
Bibliography :
J.-C. Martinet, G. Wildenstein, Marquet - L'Afrique du Nord - Catalogue de l'oeuvre peint, Skira/Seuil, Wildenstein Institute, Paris, Milan, 2001, n°I-738, reproduced in black and white p.540
"Marquet went to Egypt in February 1928. He first stayed in Cairo, which he quickly fled, bored by the official receptions. He chose to go to Aswan, in Upper Egypt by train. The artist set to work in front of the Cataract Hotel; he painted several views of the Nile and the Elephantine Island before leaving on a cruise where he drew and executed a few watercolours on the boat" (Marquet, North Africa, Wildenstein Institute).
In The Nile at Aswan, Marquet uses one of his usual compositional devices, placing himself overhanging the foreground while the perspective and backgrounds are straightened in the picture plane. This bold construction is combined with the blazing sunlight that bathes the loop of the Nile, with "Cleopatra's Baths" on Elephantine Island in the foreground and the mythical Old Cataract Hotel on the opposite shore.
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