Gaston Casimir Saint-Pierre

GASTON CASIMIR SAINT-PIERRE (Nimes, 1833- Paris, 1916).
"The Sultana".
Oil on canvas.
Signed.
Measurements: 155 x 105,5 cm; 173 x 130 cm (frame).

The portraits of North African women were undoubtedly one of Gaston Casimir Saint-Pierre's greatest achievements. Algeria, a country he visited on numerous occasions, exerted a decisive influence on both his painting and his graphic production. He even worked there, carrying out commissions for the church of Oran, at a time when the territory was an essential part of French colonial rule. The portrait currently on tender depicts a young sultana, with long black hair, naked from the waist up, whose attention seems to be directed towards a tortoise approaching her feet. The artist dwells meticulously on the details of the composition: the scene takes place in an interior courtyard with marble columns and a fountain with well-defined edges. A carpet covers the floor on which the young woman rests, next to her slippers, thus denoting the painter's taste for detail.

Gaston Casimir Saint-Pierre was a French painter linked to academicism and the orientalist movement of the 19th century. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under the tutelage of Alexandre Cabanel, he participated in the Paris Salon and cultivated a painting of precise drawing and polished finish, in accordance with the academic ideals of his time. Attracted by North Africa, especially Algeria -then a French colony-, he incorporated into his work scenes and portraits set in oriental contexts, with special attention to the female figure, clothing and local architecture, treated with meticulousness and a marked taste for detail. During his stays in Algeria he also carried out religious commissions, such as paintings for the church of Oran, thus becoming part of the official circuits. Although he did not achieve the fame of other contemporary orientalists, his production is part of the group of artists who contributed to spread an idealized and exoticizing vision of the North African world in 19th century France.