Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps

Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps was one of the founders of French Orientalism. His scenes of daily life in Turkey and the Near East have strong sunlight, deep shadow and thick, rough paint, and his work was admired alongside that of Delacroix and Ingres.

He was born in Paris in 1803. A journey to the Eastern Mediterranean in the late 1820s gave him the subjects he painted for the rest of his life: caravans, streets, mosques, bazaars and biblical stories set in real Eastern landscapes. His pictures caused a sensation at the Salon of 1831. He also painted history, notably The Defeat of the Cimbri of 1833, and animals, especially monkeys, including a satire of art critics called The Monkey Connoisseurs.

The Caravan and Before a Mosque show his hard white light and the heavy texture of his paint. He received the grand medal at the 1855 Paris Exposition and died near Fontainebleau in 1860.