An ocher earth, languid odalisques, a red sun under a pink sky speckled with mauve... At first glance, nothing opposes the incandescent work of Étienne Nasreddine Dinet to that of his orientalist comrades. Do we not see in his shimmering palette the same colors as those of Théodore Chassériau and the same rituals immortalized under the brushes of Eugène Delacroix? And yet, the trajectory of this desert painter, converted to Islam at the twilight of his life, is unlike any other.

Through the selection of around sixty luminous canvases, the Institut du monde Arabe lifts the veil on the pictorial heritage of the most Algerian of French artists of whom he is one of the rare – if not He is the only one to have escaped the trial of the colonial gaze. If he does not resist certain orientalist fantasies with his indiscreet nude scenes, Étienne Nasreddine Dinet also paints the fellah and the houri in their daily tasks, celebrating the beauty of the people of the sun under a profusion of sparkling jewelry and sumptuous fabrics . A declaration of love in painting for a country whose painter married the land, the faith and the cause until becoming this “master of Algerian painting”.

Did you know?
Unlike Dinet, Fromentin, Gérôme or Delacroix, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres never set foot in the Orient. His work, haunted by lascivious odalisques and the sensual vapors of harems, is that of all fantasies.