Page 117 - Orient Collection
P. 117

52.  Arab WARRIOR fighting the French Occupiers


 Artist: Philibert Girault de PRANGEY, French, (1804 – 1892)
 Execution date (approximate): 1855
 Téchnique: Oil on Canvas, (signed lower left)
 Measures: 99 x 80.5 cm.
 Description: A rare de Prangey painting where two French soldiers are pursuing an Arab
 Warrior, probably Algeria. An Arab warrior trying to escape two French soldiers.


 Biography
 Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (21 October 1804 – 7 December 1892) was a French
 photographer and draughtsman who was active in the Middle East. His daguerreotypes
 are  the  earliest  surviving  photographs  of  Greece,  Palestine,  Egypt,  Syria  and  Turkey.
 Remarkably, his photographs were only discovered in the 1920s in a storeroom of his
 estate and then only became known eighty years later.
 Girault de Prangey studied painting in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts and in 1841 he
 learned daguerreotypy, possibly from Louis Daguerre himself or from Hippolyte Bayard.
 Girault de Prangey was keenly interested in the architecture of the Middle East, and
 he toured Italy and the countries of the eastern Mediterranean between 1841 and 1844,
 producing over 900 daguerreotypes of architectural views, landscapes, and portraits.
 After his return to France, Girault de Prangey made watercolour and pen-and-ink studies
 after his photographs and published a small-edition book of lithographs from them. He
 also made stereographs of his estate and the exotic plants he collected. Girault de Prangey
 did not exhibit or otherwise make his photographs known during his lifetime.











































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