Jerusalem from the Environs (ca. 1881)

Charles Théodore Frère: Jerusalem from the Environs

This painting is thought to have been exhibited by Frère at the Salon of 1881 as View of Jerusalem from the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Because the artist had not been to the Holy Land for twenty years—he last traveled there as part of Empress Eugénie’s retinue in 1861—the composition must be based on one or more earlier studies or photographs. Frère’s meticulous style derives from his training under the academician Léon Cogniet, whose ceiling decorations devoted to Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign (Musée du Louvre, Paris) were completed in 1837. [Metropolitan Museum of Art]