Willard Metcalf: Algeria

"Street Scene, Tangiers"
by Willard Metcalf

"In January 1887 Willard Metcalf's parents received a letter from Biskra, Algeria, where the artist had gone in late December 1886. Like many painters before and after him, he went there to paint exotic subject matter in the bright African sun. Delacroix was inspired by the Middle East, and Eugène Fromentin painted Arab horsemen; the American painter Frederick Bridgeman specialized in Arab scenes; Ingres did exotic bathers; Gérôme painted slave market scenes; Sargent captured the play of light on Moorish architecture; and in the twentieth century Matisse experienced the bright sunlight of the North African desert. 

To Metcalf, Algeria was like Arizona or New Mexico, and Biskra suggested Zuni. He took an adobe house for two months, and painted assiduously. He also traveled to Tunis, where he did some street scenes - seven or eight paintings and 'a number of small detail sketches.' There was the possibility of a Salon entry, something he had decided to try for. He returned to Paris in early spring 1887 to 'group the whole series of sketches into one big picture' [eight feet wide]. The result was his huge painting 'Marché de Kousse-Kousse à Tunis (Tunisian Market).' The effort was a culmination of his hard work in Paris; and in the following year it won him an honorable mention at the Salon. Although some of his smaller Algerian works are still extant, his award winning painting has disappeared."

To be continued

(Excerpt from "Sunlight and Shadow: The Life and Art of Willard L. Metcalf" by  Elizabeth de Veer and Richard J. Boyle.)