Alberto Pasini

ALBERTO PASINI (1826, Busseto - 1899, Cavoretto).
"Orientalist scene in front of a door", 1864.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower left corner.
Provenance: European private collection.
Measurements: 38 x 23 cm; 59,5 x 49 cm (frame).

Alberto Pasini is known for depicting orientalist themes in a late romantic style. He trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Parma. In 1852, he exhibited a series of thirty designs, converted into lithographs, depicting various castles around Piacenza, Lunigiana and Parma. He was noticed by the artist Paolo Toschi, who encouraged Pasini to travel to Paris, where Pasini first joined the workshop of Pierre-Luc-Charles and Eugène Cicéri, of the Barbizon School. In 1853, his lithograph of The Night won him entry into the Paris Salon and the workshop of the famous Théodore Chassériau. The outbreak of the Crimean War offered a new opportunity, when in February 1855, the latter painter recommended Pasini to replace him in the entourage of the French minister plenipotentiary Nicolas Prosper Bourée to Persia. Pasini accompanied him, returning through northern Persia and Armenia before reaching the port of Trebizond. On subsequent trips he visited Egypt, the Red Sea, Arabia, Istanbul and Persia. Pasini took advantage of his exhibitions during this trip in numerous very detailed paintings of orientalist subjects. In 1865, he spent a season in Cannes, where he painted landscapes of the Côte d'Azur.