A Street in Laghouat

In December 1852, French troops under General Pélissier stormed Laghouat, an oasis town on the northern edge of the Sahara, and a large part of the people inside were killed. Local memory calls 1852 the year of emptiness. Dinet painted this street 35 years later, in 1887. The panel is small, about 30 centimetres high, and quickly brushed. Mud-brick walls close in on a narrow lane, with the ends of roof beams sticking out of them, and along the foot of one wall lies a heap of fallen earth. Half the street is in hard sun, half in shade, and above it runs a strip of pale blue sky with a few clouds. The signature, E. Dinet, sits low in one corner, on the sunlit ground of the lane.