Gaston Casimir Saint-pierre (1833 – 1916) - Lying odalisque

Gaston Casimir SAINT-PIERRE
(Nîmes, 1833 – Paris, 1916)

Lying Odalisque

Oil on canvas
Signed lower left
37 x 57.5cm

As student of Cogniet and Jalabert at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Gaston Casimir Saint-Pierre practiced the art of drawing and painting.

As great lover of the Orient, he assiduously and enthusiastically frequented Algeria - whose light and sensuality of women exercised a preponderant influence on his painting and his drawings - so much so that he lived there for a while to work on the creation of several decorative panels for the Sacré-Coeur cathedral in Oran.

While becoming one of the most famous Orientalist painters of his time, he did not give up the academic ways with which he had learned to paint and continued to perform many portraits and mythological paintings with brilliance.

Proof of his academic career, Gaston Casimir Saint-Pierre exhibited regularly in the various Salon of paintings in Paris (medal winner in 1868 and 1879) as well as in the provinces for nearly forty years. He then gained a solid reputation in French and international art with works that exude exoticism and for many of them marked eroticism through the treatment of his favorite theme: the female nude.

Gaston Casimir Saint-Pierre was also a painter of great decor, as can be seen in his major achievement still in place today: a large canvas on Marseilles produced for the decoration of the hall of honor of the restaurant le Train bleu at the Gare de Lyon in Paris.

Reflecting his public success, Gaston Casimir Saint-Pierre was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1881 and then promoted to officer in 1903.

Museums: Bayonne, Bordeaux, Dijon, Limoux, Lyon, Narbonne, Marseille, Tourcoing, Troyes, Versailles…

Our painting is to be compared in its composition to his successful painting bought by the city of Lyon with the assistance of the state at the end of the Salon of 1896 "Portrait of Saadia" and today exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts from Lyon.