FÉLIX ZIEM (1821-1911) The banks of the Nile

signed ‘Ziem’ (lower right) oil on canvas 35.6 x 66 cm Literature : Catalogue raisonné by Pierre Miquel, number 405 ⊕ This lot is under temporary importation and is subject to import tax (5.5%) (EU) and administrative customs broker fees. Félix Ziem, the only artist to have entered the Louvre during his lifetime, is known not only for his works but also for his numerous trips between Venice, his favourite city, Constantinople, Algiers and Beirut. His many excursions allowed him to find inspiration for his paintings. 1856 was the year of his one-year journey to the Middle East, where he went down the Nile to Khartoum. In 1958, during his only trip through the Ottoman Empire, he found inspiration to produce one of his famous paintings, Les Bords du Nil. His ability to reproduce the effects of light has earned him comparisons to the greatest French Impressionists, even though Ziem was more interested in expressing the poetry of a landscape, as here. Here he concentrated his efforts on rendering the light and the buildings that reflect on the current of the famous river by applying the oil on canvas method. In 2011 over 150 works of the artist were exhibited at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Beaune, his hometown, for the centenary of his death.