Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private collection Lebanon

Exhibited:
American University of Beirut, Khalil Zgheib, 1955, Beirut

The present lot is a rare and masterful example of Khalil Zgheib's inimitable portraits of village life; large, finely executed and rich in detail, it stands as perhaps one of the finest examples of the celebrated artists work.

Khalil Zhgeib was born in Dbayeh, on the outskirts of Beirut. A barber by trade, he was totally self-taught and started painting in 1954. In 1955, he held an individual exhibition at AUB, where the present work was exhibited

He participated in the Salons of the Sursock Museum, Beirut (1961, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1974); in a group exhibition at Galleria La Barcacia, Rome (1962) and at Delta Gallery, Beirut.

In 1956, he won a prize from the Ministry of National Education in Beirut and in 1968, he was awarded the Sursock Museum's First Prize for Painting. The artist was shot by a sniper at his house during the war in Beirut. In 1982, the Sursock Museum paid tribute to Zgaib along with other artists who had died since 1975.

A genre painter in the truest sense of the word, Zghaib was the observer and narrator of the popular rural customs and traditions of Lebanon; bringing to life a rich and sensual idealized world full of nostalgia - nostalgia for village life, and for the frivolity and playfulness of childhood.

Zgheib's work shows the clear aesthetic and conceptual influence of the Dutch "genre painters" of the 16th century, and in order to understand his ouvre and its unique perspective on daily life we must understand the radical shift which the genre painters engendered in the history of European art.

Renaissance Art - upon which most of Western visual arts are based - was predominantly public art, commissioned by Popes, churches and secular leaders to inspire the masses with religious and moral values. Then in 1517 came the Reformation - the revolt of the Protestant countries like Holland, Germany and Flanders against the Church of Rome - with the result that religious or quasi-religious works of art abruptly declined in importance across much of Northern Europe.

As the demand for large-scale religious paintings declined during the sixteenth century, a new artistic genre began to dominate, one which saw regular people and their daily endeavors as the focus of attention, this new "humanism" in art gave birth to some of the greatest masterpieces of what was deemed the "Dutch Golden Age".

Early examples of genre painters include Quentin Massys (c.1465-1530) , Marinus van Reymerswaele (1490-1567) and Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533) – but it was the boisterous and unique style of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-69) – which would stand out as supreme amongst these

Satirical, deeply human, and encompassing wide vistas that capture the humour, cacophony and vivacious nature of rural life, Zghaib, like Bruegel makes the most mundane events fascinating to view. Depicting the playful amd the absurd, but with a wholeheartedly sympathetic, narrative eye.