Evening Prayer in the Sahara

[2][3] The painting is typical of Guillaumet’s earlier work, combining classical composition with a vast landscape populated by exotic figures, making it a standard orientalist genre scene.

[2] It was also exhibited at the Exposition Universelle (1867); at an exhibition dedicated to the works of Guillaumet at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts (1888); the Exposition Universelle (1900); the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (1974); L'Algérie de Delacroix à Renoir at the Institut du monde arabe (2003-2004); and L’Algérie de Gustave Guillaumet (1840-1887) at La Piscine Museum in Roubaix (2019).

[7] Unlike some other artists he was not primarily interested in the bright costumes or more conventional orientalist themes, but in the vastness of the infinite horizon and the majesty of the desert.

[5] As was common in his works the landscape is stripped down to bare essentials, denying the viewer any sense of perspective or alternative focus to the figures in the foreground.

[12] Reviewing the painting when it was exhibited at the salon of 1863, Auguste Cordier commented on the sharpness and depth of its colours, as well as on the authenticity and sobriety of the whole scene, most particularly in the figures of the praying Arabs.