Information
oil on canvas
53 x 80 cm
53 x 80 cm
leased, dated and signed lower left: Thebes Karnac 2 juin 1863 / FBarry
Literature
Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure, et lithographie des artistes vivants exposés au Grand palais des Champs-Élysées , Paris, 1864, p. 17.
The splendid painting was exhibited by Barry in 1864 at the Paris Salon together with Chouna, extremité de la prémière cataracte du Nil following the journey undertaken by Prince Napoleon and Princess Clotilde in 1863, where the official painter of the trip was François Pierre Barry (Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure, et lithographie des artistes vivants exposés au Grand palais des Champs-Élysées, Paris, 1864, p. 17). The importance of this painting is soon said; was the first painter in contact with Prince Napoleon Gerolamo Bonaparte, Ferdinand de Lesseps and Jules Charles Roux to attend the works on the Suez Canal in 1862, and from there he followed the prince throughout the Egyptian journey, providing the Parisian public with the works he they spoke of the East with a greater sense of topicality. The moonlight, the dim lights, the dance and the party are combined in a unique atmosphere with the ruins of the temple of Karnak in a tale that is not only documentary - although this increases its charm - but entirely artistic, in a skill for a painter until 1862 accustomed to recounting maritime episodes of his Marseilles. It was therefore a renewal for Barry in subjects and pictorial research, more fluid and romantic, and the discovery of a more nuanced orientalism in the West.Condition report
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