The Palace Guard (1902) by the Austrian painter Ludwig Deutsch (1855-1935).Deutsch was a very successful orientalist painter and spent most of his career in Paris. To achieve highly detailed scenes he travelled various times to Egypt, took a lot of photographs and had a large collection of tiles, furniture, arms, pipes, fabrics, and costumes.
But nonwithstanding that he was very exact in the details of architecture and costumes his paintings are pure invention. They are glorifying an exotic oriental past, which never existed. But especially because of this combination Deutsch can be considered as one of the ancestors of modern fantasy art.
Thank you for this blog! I study art history for the first year and these texsts are very interesting. There are not many blogs like this in Finnish. Or not yet.
ReplyDeleteGreetings from Finland,
Henna
I love this painting. Even if it is fantasy. Especially, I suppose, because it IS fantasy. Thanks for posting such gorgeous work on your blog.
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