Alberto Pasini

(Italian, 1826-1899)

Marketplace at the Entrance to a Bazaar, Constantinople

Footnotes

Provenance
Anon. sale, Christie's, New York, 11 November 1998, lot 138, as The Bazaar.
L'Etoile Royale, New York.
Private collection, California.
Anon sale, Christie's New York, 25 April, 2016, lot 79.
Private collection (acquired from the above by the present owner).



Like Fromentin, with whom he was often compared, Pasini was struck by the delicacy of the light in the East. His treatment of the play between shadow and the sun and his almost photographic representation of architecture and figures are a world apart from the imaginary exoticism of earlier Orientalist paintings.
(Lynn Thornton, The Orientalist Painters Paris, 1983, p. 124)


Alberto Pasini is considered among the finest Italian Orientalist painters, skilfully capturing the architecture, colours and atmosphere of North African and Asia Minor. Born in Parma and educated at the city's Accademia di Belle Arti, before moving to Paris in 1851, his first exposure to the Orient came in 1855, when Pasini accompanied diplomat Prosper Bourée on an 18-month trip of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Yemen and the Persian Gulf, returning to France via the Black Sea and Constantinople. He would make further trips to Egypt, Asia Minor and Syria, and returned to Constantinople in the late 1860s.

Pasini would either paint from memory or elaborated on the wealth of drawings and notes that he rapidly executed on site during his travels. Orientalist compositions formed the bulk of the artist's work throughout his career from the late 1870s until the mid-1880s, incorporating a diversity of 'exotic' elements in these works. Pasini regularly exhibited these works in the Paris Salon.

Following his return from Constantinople, Pasini's work in the 1870s is filled with references to the Ottoman world; the present lot incorporates drawings made of the Mısır Çarşısı -also called the Egyptian or Spice Bazaar- in Constantinople. Teeming with life, this work brilliantly demonstrates Pasini's naturalistic style and his subtle use of colour.