Moonlight Dreaming

Alexandre - Gabriel Decamps 1803 - 1860 was a French painter known for his middle Eastern and North African art subjects. Decamps was one of the first painters to travel to the East, known as an Orientalist painter he painted scenes from the scriptures including subjects such as Joseph, Moses and Samson among others. A great believer in the afterlife as this picture represents, a lady who has suffered the loss of a loved one only to realise that he lives upstairs in Heaven, Infrared images enclosed show two cherubs and the image of a man. Decamps was a lover of animals and he regularly painted humorous and unusual scenes of monkeys teaching in a classroom and others including a group of monkeys examining paintings, a result thought to relate to some of his earlier works being rejected by the Salon in Paris. He was the first famous Orientalist painter who was widely respected for painting scenes of everyday life subjects from French, Algerian and Turkish daily themes, furthermore he was regarded as one of the leading artists in Paris alongside Delacroix and Ingres. He enjoyed hunting, shooting and riding as can be seen in his biography of work, he died following a horse riding accident in the Forest of Fontainebleau in 1860, there is an abundance of biographical history available throughout the internet and it would be an injustice to the man to attempt to deliberate further on such a great artist and consequently I would advise any potential new owner of this work to investigate Decamps further. The work is signed in the sky, photo enclosed, this was obtained by Infrared photography, however an improved depiction could be obtained with multi-spectral imaging but the cost of this is still prohibitive at this time.