Scene in Morocco
Artist/Culture
Charles Georges Dufresne
(1876–1938)
Date1900–1924
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensionscanvas: 110.3 x 110.8 cm (43 7/16 x 43 5/8 in.)
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineMuseum purchase
Object number1924.9
Label TextIn 1910, Dufresne won the Prix de l’Afrique du Nord, a distinguished award for artists and sculptors that provided him with the means to travel and develop his artistic style. Dufresne journeyed to the Villa Abd-el-Tif in Algiers, which resulted in a two-year stay that sparked his interest in exoticism and allowed him to become immersed in the local culture.
Dufresne’s trip to Algeria kindled fantasies of distant “exotic” lands. The artist never visited Morocco; this scene, therefore, is a fantastical imagining of the Moroccan landscape as conceived by a French artist in his studio. Dufresne’s painting fits within a long-standing narrative of Orientalism in Western art. Popularized by nineteenth-century French Romantic painters, Orientalism has become a laden concept that involves a romanticizing and mythologizing of Eastern societies. Inspired by the discoveries of new cultures through Western imperialist expansion, Orientalist painters and writers fabricated a view of “the East” as exotic, undeveloped, and primitive. Depicting two figures in local garb set against a lush landscape of palm trees and distant desert edifices, all rendered in vibrant earthy colors, Scene in Morocco presents a romanticized view of northern Africa. Dufresne’s imagining of a distant culture is echoed in Gauguin’s Brooding Woman and Renoir’s Old Arab Woman, also displayed in this gallery.
ProvenancePercy Moore Turner, London EnglandOn View
Not on view
