Paul Elie Dubois - Touareg Meharist

The Tuareg Mehariste
Oil on panel - 1947

Large Oil on Hardboard by P.E. Dubois
representing a Tuareg Meharist at Hoggar
The Tuareg are nomads better known as the “blue men of the desert”

Signed lower left and dated (19)47

No restoration on the completely original painting.
An old label at the top right… (see photo)

Period frame in molded wood.
The frame shows traces of use
It could be repainted or replaced (?)

Dimensions:
Panel: 107 x 126 cm (width x height)
Frame: 118 x 138 cm

A very powerful composition with the subject occupying the space “in majesty”
This painting belongs to the artist's last period.
It is very representative in its subject and its composition.

See Biography below.

Paul Élie Dubois (1886-1949)
French painter attached to the School of Algiers.
Biography
Student at the Académie Julian and at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. Paul Élie Dubois exhibited at the French Artists in 1908 with a portrait of a Comtois peasant.
In 1911, he obtained an honorable mention with a portrait entitled Jeanne.
In 1912 the State acquired his painting Harmonie en blanc and in 1913 he again presented La Robe rose and Les ramasseurs de bois l'hiver then in 1914 Printemps2.
During the First World War, he painted a large composition called Mourning which earned him a silver medal, the Thirion Prize and a travel grant at the 1920 Salon of French Artists. This is how he left that year for a two-year stay at the Villa And-El-Tif in Algiers.
Paul-Elie Dubois will no longer detach himself from this country, where he will experience the most exhilarating years of his career. According to his own expression, he will have the “revelation of light” in Algeria.
His return is a great success.
In 1922 he won a gold medal at the Salon for the painting Arab Women at the El-Kettar Cemetery and was then out of competition.
The Institute also rewarded him in 1923 as did the Superior Council of Fine Arts which awarded him its National Prize for Arab Musicians and Peace in the Light.
In 1926, the Salon received Le Blanc Cortère, A carpet market and Marrakech (Morocco). He also exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries a series of paintings brought back from his trip to Morocco.
He is an ethnographic painter who participated in numerous missions to Hoggar in particular from 1928 and was attached to the life of the Tuaregs, the Blue Men of the desert.
In 1930, the distinction “Ambassador of Hoggar” was awarded to him.
He was present at the Colonial Exhibition of 1931, the Brussels International Exhibition in 1935, the universal exhibitions in Paris in 1937 and in New York in 1939.
His works are preserved, among others, at the Luxembourg Museum, the Petit-Palais, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers, the National Zabana Museum of Oran, the National Museum of Bardo, the of the Thirties of Boulogne-Billancourt, at the museums of Montbeliard, Besançon, Luxeuil-Les-Bains, Voiron and Narbonne.

Awards
• Prix Thiron (1920).
• Prix Abd-El-Tif (1920).
• Prix national des Beaux Arts (1923).
• Grand prix Arts artistique de l'Algérie (1927).
• Prix Dumoulin pour l'Algérie, Salon de 1935.


Bibliography
• René Édouard-Joseph, Dictionnaire biographique des artistes contemporains, tome 1, A-E, Art & Édition, 1930, p. 429-430 (avec portrait en p. 429 et signatures en p. 430.
• Chantal Duverget, Paul Élie Dubois, peintre du Hoggar, mémoire de DEA, Université des Lettres et sciences humaines de Franche-Comté, Besançon, mai 1992.
• Élizabeth Cazenave, La villa Abd el Tif, un demi-siècle de vie artistique en Algérie 1907-1962, Paris : éditions ABD EL tIF, 1998.
• Élizabeth Cazenave, Paul Élie Dubois, peintre du Hoggar, éditions du Layeur, 2006.
• Élizabeth Cazenave, Les artistes de l'Algérie. Dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs 1830-1962, Bernard Giovanangeli éditeurs ; Association Abd El Tif, 2001.