Albert BESNARD (1849-1934). Street scene with... Lot 33

Albert BESNARD (1849-1934). Street scene with an elephant in India. Oil on mahogany panel signed, dated 1913 lower right and bearing on the back a handwritten label "2046". Height : 49,5 49.5 cm - Length : 61 cm Works of comparison : - Albert Besnard, On the Trichinopoly Bridge, oil on canvas, 1911-1912, kept at the Musée du Petit Palais under the inventory number PPP2047. - Indian women in Udaipur, watercolor, Christie's sale of June 22, 2006, lot 151. Albert Besnard studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was awarded the Grand Prix de Rome in 1874. His technique and reputation made him one of the most prominent decorative painters of the Belle Epoque: in Paris, he painted the walls of the Ecole de Pharmarcie and the Sorbonne, the ceiling of the Hôtel de Ville, the Petit Palais and the Comédie Française. Abroad, he decorated the French embassy in Vienna. If he was one of the most fashionable portraitists of the Parisian intelligentsia at the beginning of the century, Besnard was above all captivated by an elsewhere. At the end of the 19th century, he was exhibited at the Salon de la Société des peintres orientalistes. He painted Morocco, then Algeria, before leaving in 1910 for a long expedition to India. In Calcutta, Trichinopoly, Pondicherry, Benares and Delhi, he painted scenes of daily life in a sharp and intense palette; its inhabitants, markets and elephant processions captivated him. This production, presented at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1912, was received with great success. Our work painted in 1913 illustrates his vision of a flamboyant India saturated with color and light. Marked by this journey, the painter went so far as to write the same year the account of his trip entitled: "The Man in Pink or India the Color of Blood. In 2016, Albert Besnard is the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Petit Palais, Museum of Fine Arts of the city of Paris.