Girl in a Courtyard, Algiers (formerly Courtyard in Tangier)

The Artist: Most sources give Philippe Pavy’s year of birth as 1860 but provide no year of death. However, death notices published in 1891 state that he was then thirty-four years old, which would mean that he was born in 1856 or 1857. Pavy, sometimes called Pavy de Charentais, is known primarily by means of paintings, most of them depicting North African subjects, that appear on the art market. A pupil of Ernest Meissonier, Pavy was a fashionable artist but a minor figure, and is little studied. His brother, Eugène Pavy, was likewise an Orientalist painter. Early sources sometimes confuse Philippe and Eugène, but give the impression that Eugène was younger, perhaps suggesting that it was he who was born in 1860. The Pavy brothers’ family origins remain to be established with certainty.

According to an unsigned news item in the Parisian newspaper Le Constitutionnel dated December 14, 1886, Pavy spent a long period of time “en Orient et en Algérie” and had then lived in London for ten years. There is scant evidence of Philippe Pavy as a participant in exhibitions other than in London, where, between about 1874 and 1883, he showed at the Royal Academy of Arts and, more frequently, at the Society of British Artists. His name was occasionally rendered in English, as Philip E. Pavy, Esq. Writing in the Magazine of Art, a critic reviewing the exhibition held at the Society of British Artists in January 1883 praised Pavy’s paintings for their “unobtrusive style, their thorough but nevertheless artistic treatment of details, and their marked richness and variety of colour” (p. 10). This description may appear to be so low-key as to convey little, but it is accurate, as Pavy employed a largely academic technique (“unobtrusive style”) with a lively touch (“artistic treatment of details”).

The Painting: A girl stands leaning on a pilaster that borders, on the left, a wall with turned woodwork below and masonry above, and, on the right, a fountain. Her proper right leg is crossed before her left. Her fingers are intertwined on top of her head, with elbows out on either side of long, dark hair. Her eyes are downcast, gazing at pigeons by her feet. A brass brazier with its pan appear on the left. The brushwork is delicate yet painterly.

Most of the details of the girl’s garments, as well as the architectural elements, derive from Algerian sources. This girl, wearing the same clothes and in the same pose, appears in a photograph produced in 1884 or earlier and retailed by the Algiers studio of Jean Geiser (Swiss, 1848–1923). The photo, which served as Pavy’s primary source, is annotated in the plate “Aïcha, jeune mauresque d’Alger.”[1] The fountain is based on one in the courtyard of the Admiralty at Algiers, early photographs of which also exist, though the building is inaccessible to the public today. Incorporating early faïence tiles and decorative marble panels, it was installed in 1765 by Baba-Ali Neskis, known as Bou-Sebâ, Dey of Algiers from 1754 to 1766.[2] There are also comparable examples of open woodwork in the Admiralty. Pavy’s composition is a pastiche of these sources, to which the painter added details such as the jewelry. As proposed by Emily Weeks (2008), the subject of an Arab girl with pigeons at her feet may have been inspired by William Holman Hunt’s The Afterglow in Egypt, painted about 1854–63 (Southampton Art Gallery, SOTAG:1280).

Where Pavy painted this work and his sources for additional details, including the colors he employed, are unknown. However, the artist appears to have taken liberties with the identification of the scene, as attested by inscriptions on the back of the panel, including the given title, Courtyard in Tanger [sic], whose calligraphy matches that of the signature and the date inscribed on the face of the painting.[3]

Taken together, these elements reveal the artist’s approach to producing an image whose subject is layered—but also hidden, the result of the casual or possibly deliberate misidentification of the location he depicted. In this way, Pavy’s creative process as it intersects with his construction of meaning contribute to a general understanding of Orientalist picture-making. Pavy later adapted the same figure for a painting in which she leans against a wall beside an elderly man.[4]

Asher Miller 2024

Identifications of the elements in this painting were communicated by Ikram Moumen, to whom the author is immensely grateful. Further information about the album of photographs by Geiser was graciously forwarded by Sylvie Aubenas and Olivier Loiseaux.

[1] A print of this photograph is included as plate 57 in [2 albums et 101 phot. d'Algérie, principalement sites et types ethniques, portraits de Si Mohammed Belkassem, marabout de El Ham... (?) et de Mohammed Srir, fils du cadi de Biskra, en 1884], collection of the Société de Géographie in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.
[2] See Henri Klein, “Les fontaines mauresques,” Feuillets d'El-Djezaïr, 1937, p. 184.
[3] Signed and dated (lower right): PHILIP. PAVY / 1886.; inscribed (on back, upper left): TANGER; signed, dated, and inscribed (on back, at right): In I[sic] COURTYARD IN TANGER / PH. PAVY / 1886; stamped: 8; numbered (Christie’s stencil): JL365; and 129N08481 / 01127/08 CD[?].
[4] Whereabouts unknown (sale, Christie’s, New York, December 4, 2002, no. 638, as The Merchant and His Daughter, 1891, oil on panel, 18 1/8 x 14 1/2 in. [46 x 36.8 cm]).

Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right): PHILIP-PAVY 1886

sale, Christie's East, New York, October 30, 2001, no. 105, as "Reverie," to private collection, U.S.A. for $18,800; private collection, U.S.A. (2001–8; sale, Sotheby's, New York, October 23, 2008, no. 183, bought in; sold to Lane); Kenneth Jay Lane, New York (2008–16)

Emily M. Weeks in 19th Century European Art, including the Orientalist Sale. Sotheby's, New York. October 23, 2008, pp. 324–25, no. 183, ill. (color), as "In a Courtyard, Tangier"; notes that British audiences would have admired the artist's meticulous painting technique; states that the French artist Pavy may have signed the work "Philip" rather than "Philippe" to appeal to the same English audiences captivated by the British Orientalism of William Holman Hunt and Frederic, Lord Leighton; notes the similarity of the figure's pose to that of harem girls in French Orientalist paintings.