On the Nile

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Artist: Eugène Fromentin (French, 1820–1876)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 63.8 × 110.6 cm (25 × 43 1/2 in.); Framed: 80.7 × 127 × 6.4 cm (31 3/4 × 50 × 2 1/2 in.)
Museum: Art Institute of Chicago
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

This seemingly objective rendering of 19th-century Egypt depicts a caravan resting on the shores on the Nile. A large dahabeah, or houseboat, balances on the low horizon line. The building in the right background might be the temple at Luxor or the one at Philae, the latter of which Eugène Fromentin mentioned in the diary he kept while traveling in Egypt during the fall of 1869.

Fromentin was in Egypt to witness the opening of the Suez Canal; he based this composition on sketches he made at the time. While Orientalism—European representations of Near Eastern and North African places and people—was beginning to wane by the time Fromentin painted this scene, the opening of the canal marked a new age of colonial imperialism.

Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0.