Etching La Medina By Henri Jean Pontoy 1888-1968

 Etching of the Medina in Morocco. Some foxing on the margins
Henri (or Henry also known as Henri Jean) Pontoy is a French painter born in Reims on February 5, 1888 and died in 1968. He entered the School of Fine Arts in Paris, in the studio of Luc-Olivier Merson, and exhibited his engravings at the Salon of French Artists, and his paintings at the Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts, at the Salon d'Automne, as well as at the Salon of Algerian Orientalist Artists. In 1926, he received a travel grant from the Colonial Society of French Artists which allowed him to travel to North Africa, notably to Tunisia where he became a member of the Salon Tunisien the same year, then to Morocco and in French West Africa. He lived for several years around 1930 in Ouarzazate where he met Jacques Majorelle. He became a teacher of arts and letters at the Moulay Idriss high school in Fez. He was the 1933 winner of the Grand Prix de la ville d’Algiers. He returned after the war in 1947, with Majorelle, to Guinea, Ivory Coast and Cameroon (he won the Cameroon Prize in 1951). His fresh and airy palette of warm colors, both in oils and in watercolors, has always met with great success. He is one of the last French representatives of neo-classical orientalism, which reached its peak between the wars.