Etienne DINET (Paris 1861-1929) Lot n° 18

El Gour-Brezina-El Bayadh Oil on canvas 82 x 65,5 cm Signed, located and dated lower right E. Dinet Brizina 1890 Brezina, in the South West of Algeria, is a plain of steppes punctuated by high rocks. This unchanging scenery evokes time immemorial. Fascinated by local and ancestral traditions, in love with landscapes bursting with colour, Etienne Dinet paints with equal pleasure and detail the steep mountains and the desert expanses. The critic of the 1891 Salon du Champs-de-Mars praised these paintings in these terms: "Here is M. Dinet, for example, who takes us on a walk in the Sahara, south of Brizina, or else to Laglant; he gives us the sensation of charred lands and burning sands with a rare originality of manner, whether it be Jeu de la poudre, a scene of Arabian fantasy, or Une Caravane en marche (A Caravan on the move)." Supplement to the newspaper Le Soir, May 14, 1891. "One cannot insist too much on the realistic character of his work, so great is the risk of confusing the prestige it exerts with that of an exoticism proposing an idealizing or fantastical vision (...). No doubt one is first impressed by the vivid brilliance of the colours, the barbaric sumptuousness of the jewels, the striking contrasts of the violet shadows and the ochre light - and it takes a while to convince oneself, if one is not familiar with the places and people represented by the painter, that he has shown what he saw, and not a world full of his desires and nostalgia. K. Benchikou, The life and work of Etienne Dinet, Acr, 1984, p. 84-85