Adrien Dauzats (1804 – 1868) - Mosque in Cairo, sketch

Adrien DAUZATS
(Bordeaux, 1804 – Paris, 1868)

Mosque in Cairo, sketch

Oil on canvas
35,5 x 27,5 cm without frame
c. 1840

Adrien Dauzats was born on July 16, 1804, in Bordeaux. Initially trained in his hometown as a painter of theater sets, he joined the École des Arts et Métiers in Angers in 1819. A few years later, in 1827, noted for his talent in faithfully reproducing the architecture of buildings through drawings taken from life and for his mastery of lithography, Baron Isidore Taylor (1789-1879) enlisted Dauzats for the first time to contribute to the illustration of Voyages pittoresques et romantiques de l’ancienne France.From April to October 1830, Dauzats again accompanied a mission by Baron Taylor, but this time to Egypt and the Near East, and he discovered Cairo, the Nile Valley, Sinai, Syria and Palestine. From this trip the artist brought back a good number of drawings and watercolors that would later be used to create his orientalist paintings, like ours. Cairo particularly marked Dauzat who recalled in his work Quinze jours au Sinaï, the impression that the discovery of this oriental architecture made on him: "As we approached (Cairo), we distinguished the alternating colors of the buildings and the elegant designs of the domes, then above the colored teeth that crown the ramparts, rising up like an immense chess game, the Madenehs of three hundred mosques (...). » Present at the Paris Salon as a student of Michel Julien Gué (1789-1843) from 1833, his last submission to the Salon dates from 1858. He was distinguished there in 1835 with a second-class medal, then various first-class medals in 1835, 1848 and 1855. Recognized as an eminent orientalist painter by his contemporaries who, like Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier and Prosper Mérimée, regularly expressed their admiration in the journalistic criticism of the time, Dauzats nevertheless remained in the shadow of Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) for a long time. Adrien Dauzats was made a knight of the Legion of Honor on May 1, 1837, and decorated with the Order of Charles III of Spain in 1856. The artist died on February 18, 1868, in Paris

Museums: Quebec, Chartres, Dijon, Orléans, Rouen, Semur-en-Auxois…

Our painting is a sketch most likely made after his return from Egypt with the Taylor mission between April and October 1830. The final painting is known: lot 93 of the Sotheby’s Paris sale of June 16, 2016 signed and dated 1840. The latter bore an inscription on the back of the painting designating this impressive mosque as that of Al-Azhar. However, the minaret and the dome depicted here are significantly different from the architecture of this great mosque, still in place in Cairo. The painting, dated 1840 and dedicated by the artist to his friend Lottin de Laval, seems more like an enchanted reconstruction of an Egypt that Dauzats had left ten years earlier.