THE MZAB PLATEAU PAINTED BY NASR'EDDINE ETIENNE DINET

 

NASR'EDDINE ETIENNE DINET (1861-1929),

The Mzab Plateau (526m - 1,725ft)

Algeria (Sahara)

In Caravane se dirigeant vers Ghardaia (Caravan on the way to Ghardaia), oil on canvas

The formation
The Mzab plateau is a rocky formation whose altitude varies between 300 and 800 meters.  The average altitude is 500 meters (Ghardaia: 526 meters).This relief, of which the origin is  from the Upper Cretaceous, is in the form of a vast stony expanse and brown and blackish rocks. The grounds are limestone. Their roughly horizontal structure indicates that they have remained in place, away from the orogenic movements, since their formation.
The deepest valleys bordered by rocky cliffs with steep slopes have a gradient that rarely exceeds 100 meters in relation to the plateau.
The M'zab is therefore generally a flat region but where fluvial erosion, combined with the action of the desert climate, has created a multitude of superficial accidents that make communications most difficult.
Due to  the low latitude and the moderate altitude, the temperature is very high in summer (absolute maximum in Ghardaia: 50 ° C), moderately cool in winter (absolute minimum: minus 1 ° C in Ghardaia).  In winter as in summer, the diurnal variation of temperature is important, due to the perfect dryness of the atmosphere. For the same reason, the brightness is intense.
Sandwash from the southwest periodically accentuate the dryness of the climate. They are particularly frequent and violent in late winter and early spring.
The Mzab Valley is part of World Heritage since 1982, as an untouched example of a traditional human habitat perfectly adapted to the environment.

The painter 

Nasr'Eddine Dinet (born as Alphonse-Étienne Dinet in Paris) was a French orientalist painter.

Compared to modernist painters such as Henri Matisse, who also visited northern Africa in the first decade of the 20th century, Dinet’s paintings are extremely conservative. They are highly mimetic, indeed ethnographic, in their treatment of their subject.

Dinet’s understanding of Arab culture and language set him apart from other orientalist artists. Surprisingly, he was able to find nude models in rural Algeria. Before 1900, most of his works could be characterized as "anecdotal genre scenes". As he became more interested in Islam, he began to paint religious subjects more often. He was active in translating Arabic literature into French, publishing a translation of an Arab epic poem by Antarah ibn Shaddad in 1898.

Dinet was born the son of a prominent French judge.   From 1871, he studied at the prestogious Lycée Henry IV in Paris, where the future president Alexandre Millerand was also among the students. Upon graduation in 1881 he enrolled in the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and entered the studio of Victor Galland. The following year he studied under William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian. He also exhibited for the first time at the Salon des artistes français.

Dinet made his first trip to Bou Saâda by the Ouled Naïl Range in southern Algeria in 1884, with a team of entomologists. The following year he made a second trip on a government scholarship, this time to Laghouat. At that time he painted his first two Algerian pictures: les Terrasses de Laghouat  (Laghouat Terraces) or  Oued M’Sila après l’orage (Oued M'Sila after the storm).

He won the silver medal for painting at the Exposition Universelle in 1889, and in the same year founded the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts along with Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes, Rodin, Carolus-Duran and Charles Cottet. In 1887 he further founded with Léonce Bénédite, director of the Musée du Luxembourg, the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français.

In 1903 he bought a house in Bou Saâda and spent three quarters of each year there.

He announced his conversion to Islam in a private letter of 1908, and completed his formal conversion in 1913, upon which he changed his name to Nasr’Eddine Dinet. In 1929 he and his wife undertook the Hajj to Mecca. The respect he earned from the natives of Algeria was reflected by the 5,000 who attended his funeral on 12 January 1930 in Bou Saâda. There he was eulogized by the former Governor General of Algeria Maurice Viollette.

.___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

JEBEL EL-AZREG PAINTED BY NASR'EDDINE ETIENNE DINET

NASR'EDDINE ETIENNE DINET (1861-1929)

Jebel el-Azreg (1,491 m - 4,892 ft)

Algeria

In  Midi en juillet à Bou-Saâda (Noon In July in Bou Saâda), watercolour, 1884  

The mountain
Jebel el-Azreg  (1,491m) is the highest point of the Ouled Nail mountains (جبال أولاد نايل), a  range of the Saharian Atlas, located in Algeria near the town of Bou-Saâda. The Ouled Nail mountains  owe their name to the tribal confederation of Ouled Naïl who live in the massif.
The Ouled Nail mountains  are located between Jebel Amour to the east and the Zab mountains to the west, from Djelfa to Messaad, and constitute a set of links and depressions. The human presence in the region is attested from prehistoric times; enameled vestiges of Libyan-Berber writings, rock engravings and funerary monuments are found here. In antiquity, the region was populated by the Gétules, then by the Romans who installed advanced military posts as the castellium of Demmedi in Messaad.
During the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in the seventh century, the region was inhabited by Zen Berbers: Sindjas, Ghomra and Laghouat who were islamized but remained independent over successive dynasties and empires. In the eleventh century, Zoghba Arab hordes enter the region.
During the Ottoman period, the Eastern tribes (Ouled Naipl Cheraga) depended on the authority of the Beylik of Constantine while the tribes of the West (Gheraba) fell under that of the Titteri.
The first French incursions into the region date from 1843, in 1861 the city of Djelfa is created. During the Algerian war, the region became a stronghold of the NLA, the armed wing of the FLN.
The Ouled Nail mountains  are home to some ksour, especially to Zaccar and Amourah, which testify that sedentary and village life was more developed at certain times. Numerous rock formations are present in the Ouled Naïl mountains, which are an extension of those of Jebel Amour and the Ksour mountains, the oldest dating back to 8000 BC .

The painter 

Nasr'Eddine Dinet (born as Alphonse-Étienne Dinet in Paris) was a French orientalist painter.

Compared to modernist painters such as Henri Matisse, who also visited northern Africa in the first decade of the 20th century, Dinet’s paintings are extremely conservative. They are highly mimetic, indeed ethnographic, in their treatment of their subject.

Dinet’s understanding of Arab culture and language set him apart from other orientalist artists. Surprisingly, he was able to find nude models in rural Algeria. Before 1900, most of his works could be characterized as "anecdotal genre scenes". As he became more interested in Islam, he began to paint religious subjects more often. He was active in translating Arabic literature into French, publishing a translation of an Arab epic poem by Antarah ibn Shaddad in 1898.

Dinet was born the son of a prominent French judge.   From 1871, he studied at the prestogious Lycée Henry IV in Paris, where the future president Alexandre Millerand was also among the students. Upon graduation in 1881 he enrolled in the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and entered the studio of Victor Galland. The following year he studied under William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian. He also exhibited for the first time at the Salon des artistes français.

Dinet made his first trip to Bou Saâda by the Ouled Naïl Range in southern Algeria in 1884, with a team of entomologists. The following year he made a second trip on a government scholarship, this time to Laghouat. At that time he painted his first two Algerian pictures: les Terrasses de Laghouat  (Laghouat Terraces) or  Oued M’Sila après l’orage (Oued M'Sila after the storm).

He won the silver medal for painting at the Exposition Universelle in 1889, and in the same year founded the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts along with Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes, Rodin, Carolus-Duran and Charles Cottet. In 1887 he further founded with Léonce Bénédite, director of the Musée du Luxembourg, the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français.

In 1903 he bought a house in Bou Saâda and spent three quarters of each year there.

He announced his conversion to Islam in a private letter of 1908, and completed his formal conversion in 1913, upon which he changed his name to Nasr’Eddine Dinet. In 1929 he and his wife undertook the Hajj to Mecca. The respect he earned from the natives of Algeria was reflected by the 5,000 who attended his funeral on 12 January 1930 in Bou Saâda. There he was eulogized by the former Governor General of Algeria Maurice Viollette.

.___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

JEBEL AMOUR BY NASR'EDDINE ETIENNE DINET

NASR'EDDINE ETIENNE DINET (1861-1929) 

Jebel Amour  / Jebel Ksel (2,008 m - 6,587 ft) 

Algeria 

 In Caravane à Laghouat, 1890, oil on canvas

The mountain 

Jebel Amour (جبال العمور)  (Jebel Love in English) is a mountain range of Algeria located in the center of the country, constituting part of the Saharan Atlas and culminating at Jebel Ksel (2,008 m - 6,587 ft). In the Middle Ages, Jebel Amour was called Jebel Rached. It owes its current name to the Bedouin Arab tribe of Loves. Jebel Amour is part of the Saharan Atlas. It is located between the Ksour Mountains in the west and those of the Ouled Naïl in the East, but it is difficult to define its limits. It stretches over a hundred kilometers in length, from south-west to north-east, for a width of 60 kilometers, between the Sahara in the south and the "Hauts-Plateaux" in the north. It alternates between tabular surfaces and deep valleys. Djebel Amour is the best watered of the mountains of the Saharan Atlas; rainfall is between 300 and 400 mm per year, the central part receives more than 500 mm1. It is also rich in sources, bottoms of wadis, orchards and clear forests on the summits where still live rare species like some birds of prey and mouflon.

The painter 

Nasr'Eddine Dinet (born as Alphonse-Étienne Dinet in Paris) was a French orientalist painter.

Compared to modernist painters such as Henri Matisse, who also visited northern Africa in the first decade of the 20th century, Dinet’s paintings are extremely conservative. They are highly mimetic, indeed ethnographic, in their treatment of their subject.

Dinet’s understanding of Arab culture and language set him apart from other orientalist artists. Surprisingly, he was able to find nude models in rural Algeria. Before 1900, most of his works could be characterized as "anecdotal genre scenes". As he became more interested in Islam, he began to paint religious subjects more often. He was active in translating Arabic literature into French, publishing a translation of an Arab epic poem by Antarah ibn Shaddad in 1898.

Dinet was born the son of a prominent French judge.   From 1871, he studied at the prestogious Lycée Henry IV in Paris, where the future president Alexandre Millerand was also among the students. Upon graduation in 1881 he enrolled in the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and entered the studio of Victor Galland. The following year he studied under William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian. He also exhibited for the first time at the Salon des artistes français.

Dinet made his first trip to Bou Saâda by the Ouled Naïl Range in southern Algeria in 1884, with a team of entomologists. The following year he made a second trip on a government scholarship, this time to Laghouat. At that time he painted his first two Algerian pictures: les Terrasses de Laghouat and l’Oued M’Sila après l’orage (Oued M'Sila after the storm).

He won the silver medal for painting at the Exposition Universelle in 1889, and in the same year founded the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts along with Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes, Rodin, Carolus-Duran and Charles Cottet. In 1887 he further founded with Léonce Bénédite, director of the Musée du Luxembourg, the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français.

In 1903 he bought a house in Bou Saâda and spent three quarters of each year there.

He announced his conversion to Islam in a private letter of 1908, and completed his formal conversion in 1913, upon which he changed his name to Nasr’Eddine Dinet. In 1929 he and his wife undertook the Hajj to Mecca. The respect he earned from the natives of Algeria was reflected by the 5,000 who attended his funeral on 12 January 1930 in Bou Saâda. There he was eulogized by the former Governor General of Algeria Maurice Viollette.

___________________________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau