Théodore Ralli

[1] He was sent to Paris under the patronage of King Otto of Greece and studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme, French painter and professor at the École des Beaux-Arts, and under Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouy, both known for their orientalist paintings.

His other genre paintings were often nostalgic recollections of the life and customs of his Greek homeland, which he portrayed with a delicate and moving reverence.

He was a member of the Société des Artistes Français, where he received an honourable mention in 1885, and a silver medal in 1889 for his whole work He exhibited his paintings in the Salon de Rouen (1897, 1903, 1906 and 1909) and also in Athens during the Olympic Games of 1896.

On 14 November 2007 a study for the painting Refectory in a Greek Monastery (Mount Athos) (1885) was auctioned at 200,000 euros at Sotheby's in London, and in January 2008, the painting itself was sold at the absolute record price of 670,000 euros to a Greek collector at an auction in Ghent, Belgium.

[2] This was followed by the sale of his oil on canvas, titled Praying Before the Communion at Megara (1890), by Bonhams in London on 25 May 2008, achieving a staggering hammer price of £600,000.

Greek Beauty