2023-11-16 15:31:01
“The Lion Hunt in the Sahara”, by Horace Vernet, 1836. Wallace Collection, London, UK / Bridgeman Images
CRITICISM – This painter of colonialist propaganda benefits from a courageous retrospective within the rooms decorated with his immense formats, usually invisible to the public.
While at the Trocadéro the works of his grandfather were loaded into the hold of the new Maritime Museum, Horace Vernet (1789-1863) was still prances around in Versailles. At the castle, its battles which sing of the Algerian conquest in the rooms of Africa are once again visible. We are rediscovering these works of colonialist propaganda. With their racist, anti-Semitic, imperialist, opportunist, sexist prejudices. With their spectacular power, too. Under an azure sky barely disturbed by the smoke of the powder Capture of the smala of Abd-el-Kader by the Duke of Aumale in Taguin, May 16, 1843a work even longer than its title (more than 100 m2 of painting), deploys, in the midst of other epic conflicts, its seductive picturesqueness.
Panorama of spahis in the fray, series of bivouacs and rezzous, kidnappings of harems. A thousand and one details reported as meticulously as in a campaign bulletin. Not a gaiter button is missing, observed this tongue-in-cheek Théophile Gautier…
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