An Oriental Gaze. Painted by his friend,... - Lot 0 - Gros & Delettrez

An Oriental Gaze. Painted by his friend, the painter Etienne Dinet, the penetrating, spiritual gaze which Sliman Ben Ibrahim casts upon us is that same humanist gaze which the painter casts on his companion when painting his portrait, as if amusing himself with a mirror. This forty-year friendship was touching and fruitful, leading them to produce a joint literary work: together they wrote eight books, illustrated by Dinet. All of Dinet's painted work expresses Sliman's lessons on customs, traditions, religion and culture in the Arabic world. In 1913 Dinet converted to Islam and took the name Nasreddine; he made the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1929, the year of his death. Sliman also taught him about the poetry of the Bedouin legends of the desert. We have offered buyers the world over extracts from this beautiful book of images, which Etienne Dinet painted for posterity. The trust placed in use by collectors was rewarded in a series of unprecedented auctions: - Jeune homme dans la palmeraie (Young man in the palm grove) sold for euros 1,920,000 on 11 June 2007 - nearly six times the price paid for the same painting six years previously. - La vengeance des fils d'Antar (Revenge of the sons of Antar), Martyr d'amour (Martyr of love), La dispute autour d'un sou (Quarrel over a penny) are three Dinet paintings which each fetched euros1,000,000 at our last auction on 10 December 2007. Today, six new masterpieces by Etienne Dinet will be auctioned: - Les jeunes Baigneuses à l'Oued (Young bathers in the Oued), portraits of young beauties in Bou-Saâda; - Les Baigneuses surprises (Surprised bathers), which Dinet calls a masterpiece in his correspondence, which accompanies the painting; - Fillette jouant avec son frère (Little girl playing with her brother), in which Dinet so closely resembles Renoir; - Portrait de Sliman Ben Ibrahim, 1902. - Baigneuse dans la palmeraie (Bathing girl in the palm grove); - Jeunes filles essorant leur linge (Young girls wringing