Jean Jacques Berne-bellecour (1874-1939), Horseman From North Africa, 1915,

Jean-Jacques Berne-Bellecour (1874-1939)
A North African Horseman in the forest,
Watercolor on paper
signed and dated 1915 lower right,
32 x 27.5 cm
In a modern frame : 53 x 48 cm
I was immediately intrigued and seduced by this watercolor, for the arangement of colors first, for the technical mastery and finally for its subject and the feelings it inspires: The nobility of the port of this North African soldier and the rendering of his feeling of cold The figure of Berne-Bellecour is very interesting: as pupil of Léon Gérôme and of Edouard Detaille. From Gerome he certainly retained the control of colord and their accord, from Detaille a real talent for portraiture and psychology beyond a documentary aspect. It was during the Great War that he became a full-fledged military painter. And he will particularly focus on colonial troops. The same ones that make this European war a world war. Far from what one could imagine from a haughty or condescending glance. As in our watercolor, he strives to give these men an image that reflects both their nobility, their courage and their distress on a theater of operations so far from their homelands. To put it better, he portrays this North African soldier in the way he painted Napoleon elsewhere, but by giving him more psychological depth.