Bida (Alexandre)

Les Juifs devant le mur de Salomon, photogravure, chine colle, light soiling and a close tear to right blank edge, 51x60 cm, Goupil et Cie, Paris, 19th century.

*** Alexandre Bida (1813-1895) was a painter and engraver from Toulouse, and a student of Eugène Delacroix. At the age of 30 he embarked on a long trip to Greece, Turkey, and Syria. With his orientalist drawings, he became one of the representatives of this style, with the particularity of his use of black and white. Other trips took him to Egypt, then to the Holy Land. In 1857 he presented at the Salon des Artistes the ‘Réfectoire des Moines Grecs’, the starting point for a series of drawings devoted to places of spirituality.