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Lot Essay
According to the Gospel of Luke, Christ explained what it means to 'love thy neighbor as thyself' by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan: a man travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho was robbed, beaten and left wounded and naked by the side of the road. Both a priest and a Levite passed by without helping him. Then a Samaritan - belonging to a tribe hostile to the Jews - travelling along the road, 'when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and took him to an inn, and took care of him.' (Luke 10: 33-34)
This is the scene depicted here, in Rodolphe Bresdin's largest and most famous print. Yet when first presented to the public at the Paris Salon in 1861, it was exhibited under the title Abd-el Kader secourant un chrétien.
The Algerian Emir Abd-el Kader or Abd al-Qadir (1808-1883) had united Arab and Berber tribes in the resistance against the French colonization of Northern Africa. Despite being an enemy of the French, he was known for his humanity and respect for life; in 1860, he intervened in the Damascus massacre and saved the lives of thousands of Christian inhabitants of the city.
This dramatic episode must have still been on everybody's mind when Bresdin created the print a year later, and a depiction of the Good Samaritan made a perfect tribute to this event. Another occurrence, of greater relevance to the artist's own life, has also always been recounted in relation to his masterpiece: there is documentary evidence that in 1860 Bresdin had received an allowance of 200 Francs from Princess Mathilde Bonaparte (1820-1904). The writer Auguste Fourès (1848-1891) later claimed that the artist had been furious to be given money from a niece of Napoleon III, whom he hated, and threatened to return it, despite desperately needing an income. In the end, he convinced himself to see it as payment for a commission and kept it. Since it was known that the Princess had hosted the famous Emir in Paris, it is quite possible that Bresdin did in fact create the lithograph in response to her charity towards him. Once he had finished the print, according to Fourès, he went to present it to the Princess, but was so poorly dressed, that he was turned away at her gate.
Whatever the context and circumstances of its creation, Le bon samaritain has always been admired for the the surroundings of the central scene than for the depiction of the actual parable. The following description of the print in Huymans' novel Á rebours of 1884 sums up the effect Bresdin's print had - and still has - on the viewer:
`Le Bon Samaritan...is a large engraving on stone: an incongruous medley of palms, sorbs and oaks grown together, heedless of seasons and climates, peopled with monkeys and owls, covered with old stumps as misshapen as the roots of the mandrake; then a magical forest, cut in the centre near a glade through which a stream can be seen far away, behind a camel and the Samaritan group; then an elfin town appearing on the horizon of an exotic sky dotted with birds and covered with masses of fleecy clouds. It could be called the design of an uncertain, primitive Dürer with an opium-steeped brain'.
This is the scene depicted here, in Rodolphe Bresdin's largest and most famous print. Yet when first presented to the public at the Paris Salon in 1861, it was exhibited under the title Abd-el Kader secourant un chrétien.
The Algerian Emir Abd-el Kader or Abd al-Qadir (1808-1883) had united Arab and Berber tribes in the resistance against the French colonization of Northern Africa. Despite being an enemy of the French, he was known for his humanity and respect for life; in 1860, he intervened in the Damascus massacre and saved the lives of thousands of Christian inhabitants of the city.
This dramatic episode must have still been on everybody's mind when Bresdin created the print a year later, and a depiction of the Good Samaritan made a perfect tribute to this event. Another occurrence, of greater relevance to the artist's own life, has also always been recounted in relation to his masterpiece: there is documentary evidence that in 1860 Bresdin had received an allowance of 200 Francs from Princess Mathilde Bonaparte (1820-1904). The writer Auguste Fourès (1848-1891) later claimed that the artist had been furious to be given money from a niece of Napoleon III, whom he hated, and threatened to return it, despite desperately needing an income. In the end, he convinced himself to see it as payment for a commission and kept it. Since it was known that the Princess had hosted the famous Emir in Paris, it is quite possible that Bresdin did in fact create the lithograph in response to her charity towards him. Once he had finished the print, according to Fourès, he went to present it to the Princess, but was so poorly dressed, that he was turned away at her gate.
Whatever the context and circumstances of its creation, Le bon samaritain has always been admired for the the surroundings of the central scene than for the depiction of the actual parable. The following description of the print in Huymans' novel Á rebours of 1884 sums up the effect Bresdin's print had - and still has - on the viewer:
`Le Bon Samaritan...is a large engraving on stone: an incongruous medley of palms, sorbs and oaks grown together, heedless of seasons and climates, peopled with monkeys and owls, covered with old stumps as misshapen as the roots of the mandrake; then a magical forest, cut in the centre near a glade through which a stream can be seen far away, behind a camel and the Samaritan group; then an elfin town appearing on the horizon of an exotic sky dotted with birds and covered with masses of fleecy clouds. It could be called the design of an uncertain, primitive Dürer with an opium-steeped brain'.