After Stefano Ussi

Orientalist school of the XIX century. After STEFANO USSI (Florence, 1822-1901).
"The return of the sheikh".
Oil on panel.
Measurements: 58 x 41 cm; 82 x 66 cm (frame).

Stefano Ussi was first known for his historical paintings and then for depicting orientalist subjects, mainly Arabic and Moroccan. He is considered one of the Orientalist painters of the Ottocento. He visited Egypt in 1869 on the occasion of the opening of the Suez Canal and returned in 1872 at the invitation of the Khedive. Together with his friend the painter Cesare Biseo and Edmondo De Amicis, he accompanied an Italian diplomatic delegation to Morocco in 1875. His painting of the Arab woman at the well (1880) is exhibited in the Borgogna Museum in Vercelli.
Orientalism was born in the 19th century as a consequence of the romantic spirit of escape in time and space. The first orientalists sought to reflect the lost, the unattainable, in a dramatic journey destined from the beginning to failure. Like Flaubert in "Salambo", painters painted detailed portraits of the Orient and imagined pasts, recreated to the millimeter but ultimately unknown and idealized. During the second half of the 19th century, however, many of the painters who traveled to the Middle East in search of this invented reality discovered a different and new country, which stood out with its peculiarities above the clichés and prejudices of Europeans. Thus, this new orientalist school leaves behind the beautiful odalisques, the harems and the slave markets to paint nothing but what they see, the real Orient in all its daily dimension. Along with the change of vision comes a technical and formal change; since it is no longer a question of recreating an imagined world in all its details, the brushstroke acquires impressionistic fluency, and the artists focus not so much on the depiction of the types and customs as on the faithful reflection of the atmosphere of the place, of the very identity of the North African populations.