LUCIEN LÉVY-DHURMER | RABAT

The city of Rabat, Morocco, is here depicted in a spectacular bird’s eye view, with the Hassan Tower dominating the city in the background. The sunset glimmers on the Oued Bou Regreg, bathing Rabat’s white roof tops in a soft purple light that soothes the eye as much as the soul.

Born to a Jewish family in Algiers, Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer started his academic formation in Paris and worked from a young age as a lithographer and painter for a ceramics factory in Golfe-Juan. In the early 1890s, Lévy-Dhurmer was close to artists associated with the Symbolist movement, including Carlos Schwabe, Alphonse Osbert and Alexandre Séon. During this period, the artist developed a delicate style, mainly focused on the use of the pastel, for which he was greatly praised. Slowly steering away from Symbolism, from the early 1900s he started favouring landscapes of places visited during his numerous travels through Italy, France and North Africa. As a native of Algiers, North Africa occupied a special place in the artist’s heart and was the source of inspiration for breathtaking views of which the present work and Les Roses D'Ispahan (see previous lot) are prime examples.