🔥 Fine Antique Old ORIENTALIST Exotic Arabian Asia Oil Painting, Signed 1943

Description: This is a masterful and enchanting Fine Antique Old ORIENTALIST Exotic Arabian Asia Oil Painting on canvas, attributed to Canadian Baha'i activist and Orientalist painter, Marion E. Jack (1866 - 1954.) This artwork portrays a wonderful and dreamlike image of a shirtless man, with a mustache, turban and dark tan. He looks stoically forward, and is surrounded by jungle foliage and gorgeous peacocks, perched about in various states of repose. In the lower left corner is a phenomenal pink tinged albino peacock, with his white tailfeathers extended outward in a large corona of exuberance. In the distance, onion domed white stone mosques, reminiscent of the Taj Mahal in India, are visible under a golden hued sunset sky above. My guess is that the location of this scene is in the Middle Eastern Levant region, but it may in fact be in India. Signed: "Jack Marion" in the lower right corner. I believe that Marion E. Jack may have flipped her first and last name around when she signed this painting, as women painters in the 1940's were not taken seriously as exhibited artists among much of the patriarchal fine art community of the time. Marion E. Jack was unique for traveling as a woman artist to Palestine and other locations throughout the Middle East during the 1920's, which may have inspired this artwork. Additionally, this painting is signed and dated in graphite on the top stretcher bar of the verso: "Jack Marion 1943." Approximately 28 3/4 x 34 3/4 inches (including frame.) Actual artwork is approximately 24 1/4 x 30 inches. Good condition for nearly a century of age, with some faint scuffing to the painted surface, some remnants of old, yellowed varnish, and moderate scuffing and edge wear to the original period hand-carved gilded wood frame (please see photos.) Acquired from an old collection in Los Angeles, California. If you like what you see, I encourage you to make an Offer. Please check out my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks! About the Orientalist art genre: Orientalism in Nineteenth-Century Art The Orient—including present-day Turkey, Greece, the Middle East, and North Africa—exerted its allure on the Western artist’s imagination centuries prior to the turn of the nineteenth century. Figures in Middle Eastern dress appear in Renaissance and Baroque works by such artists as Bellini, Veronese, and Rembrandt, and the opulent eroticism of harem scenes appealed to the French Rococo aesthetic. Until this point, however, Europeans had minimal contact with the East, usually through trade and intermittent military campaigns. In 1798, a French army led by General Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt and occupied the country until 1801. The European presence in Egypt attracted Western travelers to the Near and Middle East, many of whom captured their impressions in paint or print. In 1809, the French government published the first installment of the twenty-four-volume Description de l’Égypte (1809–22), illustrating the topography, architecture, monuments, natural life, and population of Egypt. The Description de l’Égypte was the most influential of many works that aimed to document the culture of this region, and it had a profound effect on French architecture and decorative arts of the period, as evidenced in the dominance of Egyptian motifs in the Empire style.Some of the first nineteenth-century Orientalist paintings were intended as propaganda in support of French imperialism, depicting the East as a place of backwardness, lawlessness, or barbarism enlightened and tamed by French rule. Antoine Jean Gros (1771–1835)—a pupil of Jacques Louis David and a history painter in Napoleon’s employ who never traveled to the Near East himself—conveys this idea in Napoleon in the Plague House at Jaffa (1804; Musée du Louvre, Paris), featuring an Eastern architectural setting and figures in exotic dress. A propagandizing work, it depicts the general’s visit to plague-afflicted prisoners during the siege of Jaffa. Recalling both Christian imagery and the divine touch of kings, Gros depicts Napoleon touching an inmate, who gestures in incredulity. Proponents of the Romantic movement, such as Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), also avidly took up themes of violence and cruelty in Oriental subjects. Delacroix’s Massacre at Chios (1824) and Death of Sardanapalus (1827–28; both Louvre) embody in images of war and destruction the Romantic themes of human pathos, uncontrollable force, and emotional extremes. The emphasis on military brutality in many Oriental subjects by Western artists reflects ongoing conflicts throughout the century: the Greek War of Independence (1821–30), the conquest of Algeria by the French in the 1830s, and the Crimean War (1853–56).While many Europeans relied on published travelogues and officially sanctioned literature like the Description de l’Égypte for their impressions of the Near East, many artists, including Delacroix, Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856), Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (1803–1860), and William Holman Hunt (1827–1910), made one or more journeys to the region. Genre painting, the prevalent form of Orientalist art in the nineteenth century, was greatly influenced by artists’ direct experience of everyday life in Near Eastern cities and settlements. Gérôme popularized the theme of the bashi-bazouk, or Turkish mercenary soldier, often depicted in routine activities or at leisure, as in a canvas by Charles Bargue (1825/26–1883). For Decamps, whose late career was shaped by the year he spent in Asia Minor (1828–29), depictions of military life elevated genre subjects to the grandeur of history painting. These artists and their contemporaries also produced scenes of quiet domesticity, maternity—as in Chassériau’s Scene in the Jewish Quarter of Constantine —and religious piety, seen in Gérôme’s Prayer in the Mosque.Occasionally, the Near Eastern setting provided a backdrop for religious works with Christian themes. This approach appealed particularly to British artists, as the explicitness of detail encouraged in the Orientalist style upheld the Protestant necessity for iconographic clarity and fidelity to nature in religious art. From his sojourn in Palestine in the 1850s, William Holman Hunt produced paintings such as The Finding of the Savior in the Temple (1854–55; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery), which uses an Orientalist setting, and The Scapegoat (1854–55; Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight), a Christian allegory set in the Palestinian landscape.Some of the most popular Orientalist genre scenes—and the ones most influential in shaping Western aesthetics—depict harems. Probably denied entrance to authentic seraglios, male artists relied largely on hearsay and imagination, populating opulently decorated interiors with luxuriant odalisques, or female slaves or concubines (many with Western features), reclining in the nude or in Oriental dress. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) never traveled to the East but used the harem setting to conjure an erotic ideal in his voluptuous odalisques. Beyond their implicit eroticism, harem scenes evoked a sense of cultivated beauty and pampered isolation to which many Westerners aspired. The taste for Orientalism further manifested itself in Eastern architectural motifs, furniture, decorative arts, and textiles, which were increasingly sought after by a European elite. Proponents of the Aesthetic movement in Great Britain (1860s–80s), who collectively advocated an aesthetic of beauty for its own sake and valued form over content in art, took particular inspiration from Oriental interiors. This taste is exemplified in the Arab Hall (1877–79) in the London home of artist Frederic Leighton (1830–1896): glittering with mosaic tiles collected from Leighton’s journeys to the East, it served as a gathering place for like-minded aesthetes.The potency of Orientalist images remained undiminished for many artists into the twentieth century, including Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, Vasily Kandinsky, August Macke, and Oskar Kokoschka, all of whom took up Orientalist themes. About the Artist: Marion E. Jack Born: 1866Died: 1954Known for: Painting Biography from Heffel Fine Art Auctions VancouverMarion E. Jack was born in 1866 into a wealthy family in Saint John, New Brunswick. Marion Jack is primarily known for being an early adopter and pioneer of the Bahá'í Faith. While studying art in Paris, she was introduced to the religion, and henceforth dedicated her life to evangelical work, painting and spreading the faith around the world from Palestine to Alaska.In 1930 she was posted to Bulgaria as a missionary, and despite the economic depression and the outbreak of war, established Bahá'í communities in Sofia and Varna. Though given the opportunity to leave for Switzerland, she opted to remain in Bulgaria, despite living in difficult conditions under communist rule until her death in 1954.Known affectionately in the Bahá'í community as “General Jack,” she has since become a symbol of the faith as one of the pioneers who spent their life in the service of others. A biography on her life titled "Never Be Afraid to Dare" was published in 2001.Her work was exhibited several times in Canada, including twice with the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, as well as the BC Society of Fine Arts. She was also a member of the Vancouver Sketch Club for a time, after her return from Alaska in 1920. Marion Jack was born on 1 December 1866 in Saint John, New Brunswick, into a prominent family. She received much of her education in England and France, where she studied art. Painting landscapes was her field of specialty. She first learned of the Bahá’í Faith at a social gathering during her student days in Paris. From that time on, she dedicated her life to serving that Faith. She spent some time in Acre, Israel, (then part of the Ottoman Empire) and, in 1908, taught English to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s grandchildren. She continued to paint while she was there.By 1914 she had returned to North America; she traveled to Alaska, Ontario, Quebec and many other places in North America to share the teachings of the Bahá’í Faith. “Jackie,” as she was affectionately called, was completely comfortable with young and old alike and was loved wherever she went, drawing everyone to her and to each other through her faith, love and devotion.Marion Jack returned to Haifa in 1930 and, following this visit, moved to Sofia, Bulgaria, where she spent the remainder of her life. In Sofia, she held frequent meetings that were well attended by people of prominence and capacity. As World War II approached and all who could flee the country did so, Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, suggested that she go to Switzerland or some other safe country. She pleaded to be allowed to stay at her post, preferring, as she put it, to “remain at the switch.” Living on a small pension, which did not always reach her, suffering serious deprivation, ageing and in poor health, she stayed at her post.For the duration of World War II, and especially after Sofia fell behind the Soviet Iron Curtain, Marion Jack displayed constancy, fearlessness and self-abnegation by remaining in Sofia and contributing to the development of the Bahá’í Faith in Bulgaria. Despite living in poverty, with an enlarged heart and many other ailments, exposed to the misery of a nation torn by war, and friends pleading with her to leave, Marion Jack remained in that country for more than 20 years, until her passing on 25 March 1954.It was not without cause that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá called her “General Jack.”* Adapted from Bahá’í World, Vol. 12, 1950-1954, “In Memoriam,” pp. 674-7. Marion Elizabeth Jack (Miss)December 1 1866 - March 25 1954 Marion E. Jack was born in Saint John, New Brunswick in 1866. She studied art in Paris for a number of years, from about 1900 to 1907, and had ten of her paintings accepted into the Academy shows, and a few even "hung on the line." The Dictionary of British Artists lists her as exhibiting from 1898 to 1912: London 1898 and 1911; Paris 1901; Rye, Sussex 1902; eleven artworks with the Royal Society in Birmingham, and seven shown in the London Salon.She was a long-time follower and proponent of the Baha'i faith, which she learned about when she was living in France.She returned to Canada, and exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1908 and 1914, and at the Art Association of Montreal from 1908 to 1916.She came to west to Vancouver in 1919, and went on an extended trip to Alaska, covering some 6,000 miles in the process (Jasion). After her return to Vancouver, she exhibited her work in the 1920 Annual Exhibition of the B.C. Society of Fine Arts, held at the Vancouver School Board offices on Hamilton Street. She exhibited more work the same year in at least three exhibitions with the Vancouver Sketch Club, winning a prize for a landscape in oil in one of the exhibitions.The painting titled "Study of Miss J. Fripp" is a portrait of Thomas William Fripp's daughter Jocelyn Mary Fripp, who was born in Hatzic on September 8 1903 and passed away in Kamloops on May 18 1991.After leaving Vancouver, Jack ended up living and working in Bulgaria for a number of years, where she died and was buried in 1954. GROUP EXHIBITIONS DATEEXHIBITIONARTWORK1920 April 10Sketch Club Monthly Exhibition(paintings from the far north)1920 JuneSketch Club Monthly Exhibition(pictures)1920 SeptemberVancouver Exhibition VSC Exhibition(landscape)(part of loan exhibition)1920 Sept. 18 - 25BCSFA Annual ExhibitionStudy of Miss J. FrippSavary IslandThe Old Favorites1920 Oct. 2 - ?Sketch Club Monthly Exhibition(portrait)(portrait)(Palestine sketch)(Palestine sketch)(landscapes)1920 Dec. 4 - ?Sketch Club Annual ExhibitionMrs. George Blace (portrait)Miss Heaton (portrait)("several portraits")(Bedouin encampment)

Price: 3500 USD

Location: Orange, California

End Time: 2024-08-20T03:54:26.000Z

Shipping Cost: 45 USD

Product Images

Item Specifics

All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted

Artist: Jack Marion

Signed By: Jack Marion

Size: Large

Signed: Yes

Period: Post-War (1940-1970)

Material: Canvas, Oil

Framing: Framed

Region of Origin: California, USA

Subject: Asia

Type: Painting

Year of Production: 1943

Original/Licensed Reproduction: Original

Item Height: 28 3/4 in

Theme: Agriculture, Animals, Architecture, Art, Cities & Towns, Continents & Countries, Cultures & Ethnicities, Domestic & Family Life, Exhibitions, Famous Places, Fashion, Floral, History, Nature, People, Portrait, Religious, Travel & Transportation

Style: Figurative Art, Illustration Art, Impressionism, Portraiture, Post-Impressionism, Orientalism, WPA

Features: One of a Kind (OOAK)

Production Technique: Oil Painting

Country/Region of Manufacture: United States

Item Width: 34 3/4 in

Handmade: Yes

Time Period Produced: 1925-1949