{"id":10850,"date":"2015-02-20T00:05:14","date_gmt":"2015-02-20T08:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=10850"},"modified":"2015-02-19T19:01:11","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T03:01:11","slug":"mmfa-exhibit-portrays-jewish-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/02\/20\/mmfa-exhibit-portrays-jewish-life\/","title":{"rendered":"MMFA exhibit portrays Jewish life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cEvening on the Terrace (Morocco)\u201d by Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant conveys a popular image of languid life of the Maghreb of the 19th century. (photo by Christine Guest from\u00a0<\/span>MMFA via cjnews.com<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Life in 19th-century southern Spain and Morocco, with its mixing of Christian, Muslim and Jewish cultures, is vividly recalled in the current main exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA).<\/p>\n

Marvels and Mirages of Orientalism from Spain to Morocco, Benjamin-Constant in His Time, which continues in the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion until May 31, is organized with the Mus\u00e9e des Augustins in Toulouse, France, and co-sponsored by the embassy of Morocco and the Communaut\u00e9 s\u00e9pharade unifi\u00e9e du Qu\u00e9bec (CSUQ), among others.<\/p>\n

Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (1845-1902), a once-popular French painter on both sides of the Atlantic, is being rediscovered by the art world. This exhibition is one of the largest ever of his work and also features other artists of the era who were fascinated by the Maghreb.<\/p>\n

Benjamin-Constant\u2019s dazzling, sunlit, often huge canvases are considered prime examples of the art movement known as Orientalism. His capturing of this mysterious world of potentates\u2019 sumptuous courts, sensuous harems and days whiled away in the Mediterranean\u2019s languid warmth fed the imagination of his fellow Frenchmen.<\/p>\n

Colonial France was enchanted by this foreign world seemingly untouched by time, yet relatively close at hand.<\/p>\n

Benjamin-Constant did not rely solely on stereotypes; he spent a great deal of time in Andalusia and, across the Strait of Gibraltar, in Morocco, but he did not shrink from employing a little fantasy, some might say clich\u00e9, in his paintings.<\/p>\n

The prolific Benjamin-Constant earlier on found numerous patrons in North America, as well as Europe, and his work is found in private collections in the United States and Canada, but he is little known today.<\/p>\n

The MMFA possesses four of his paintings, which were acquired by Montrealers during his lifetime.<\/p>\n

Almost 250 works are on view by Benjamin-Constant and several other Orientalists, as well as earlier artists who influenced them, notably Eug\u00e8ne Delacroix.<\/p>\n

Seventy-one lenders contributed to the exhibition from North America, Europe and Morocco, bringing many of these works together for the first time. Some had been kept in storage for decades and required restoration.<\/p>\n

A 400-page catalogue, with more than 500 illustrations, covering Benjamin-Constant\u2019s entire career has been published by the MMFA, the product of research by an international team of experts.<\/p>\n

Among the works of clearly Jewish themes in the exhibition are Alfred Dehodencq\u2019s imposing 1861 \u201cExecution of a Jewish Woman in Morocco,\u201d inspired by the real-life public beheading of 17-year-old Sol Hachuel in Fez in 1834.<\/p>\n

She was executed for alleged apostasy from Islam \u2013 even though the teen apparently never converted. Hachuel became a Jewish heroine, having purportedly declared, \u201cA Jewess I was born, and a Jewess I wish to die.\u201d<\/p>\n

The painting depicts a surging mob around her as the executioner draws his sword toward the neck of the kneeling girl.<\/p>\n

A small 1832 D\u00e9lacroix oil depicts a languid street scene in the Jewish quarter of Meknes, while \u201cA Jewish Woman of Morocco\u201d is an 1868 portrait by Charles-Emile-Hippolyte Vernet-Lecomte of an apparently wealthy woman in the traditional frock and headdress worn on special occasions.<\/p>\n

By Benjamin-Constant is \u201cJudith,\u201d his 1886 rendering of the brave and, in his imagination, sultry biblical heroine, swathed in clingy garb and sword in hand. It\u2019s on loan from New York\u2019s Metropolitan Museum of Art.<\/p>\n

The CSUQ and the company Buffalo David Bitton are supporting a number of activities related to the exhibition. Among them is a lecture on March 18 by Peggy Davis, an art history professor at the Universit\u00e9 du Qu\u00e9bec \u00e0 Montr\u00e9al, on La harem dans la peinture: l\u2019Orient fantasm\u00e9.<\/p>\n

For more national Jewish news, visit cjnews.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cEvening on the Terrace (Morocco)\u201d by Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant conveys a popular image of languid life of the Maghreb of the 19th century. (photo by Christine Guest from\u00a0MMFA via cjnews.com) Life in 19th-century southern Spain and Morocco, with its mixing of Christian, Muslim and Jewish cultures, is vividly recalled in the current main exhibition at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3212,3214,3211,3210,3213],"class_list":["post-10850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","tag-jean-joseph-benjamin-constant","tag-maghreb","tag-mmfa","tag-montreal-museum-of-fine-arts","tag-orientalism"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}