Mountain Landscape - Mount Babor (algeria) - Louis Ferdinand Antoni - Orientalism

Watercolor and gouache on paper, located and signed lower right Louis Ferdinand Antoni, representing Mount Babor in Algeria. Dimensions: 45x29cm (visible) - 53x37cm (with the Marie-Louise). Louis Ferdinand Antoni is a French painter and sculptor born in Bastia in 1872 and died in Algiers in 1940. Very soon after his birth in Corsica, Antoni arrived in Algeria with his parents. He studied at the St-Charles college in Blida, then at the high school in Algiers, which he left to enter the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Algiers where he was a student of Hippolyte Dubois. In 1892, he obtained a scholarship that allowed him to join the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris in the studio of Léon Bonnat. The two influences that made themselves felt in him were those of Delacroix and the Impressionists. He left Paris for southern Algeria and exhibited regularly at the Algerian Salons and the Salons of French Artists. In 1906, he married Marie Gautier, a renowned painter, in Algiers, who introduced him to the technique of color engraving, which he was enthusiastic about. He produced very beautiful etchings published by the publisher Petit, and his submissions were henceforth only intended for the National Society of Fine Arts. In 1909, the painter won a travel grant in French West Africa and landed in Dakar. He visited Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Benin, Senegal, and Timbuktu. It was a period of hard work, very fruitful, materialized by works - etchings and canvases - of high quality. Returning to Paris, he studied the art of fresco painting. In 1912, he was appointed professor of decorative arts at the School of Fine Arts in Algiers, a position he held until his death. He volunteered as a private on September 18, 1914, and was wounded during the Great War. He was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor. In 1922, he was a member of the National Salon of Fine Arts, which awarded him the Prix Paquin. In 1928, he received the Prix Gillot-Dard. After the death of Léon Cauvy, he became director of the School of Fine Arts in Algiers.