File:Arab Horse Soldiers - Spahis.jpg

English: Commissioned by Constantine Alexander Ionides from the artist. Titled Spahis, it entered Ionides' collection after October 1873 (cf. letters dated March to October 1873, private collection); listed in Ionides' inventory of November 1881 as 'Cavaliers Arabes' by Regamey, with a valuation of £100; bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides, 1900.

Historical significance: This painting shows three Arab horsemen descending a declivity in the desert. Such cavalry were known as spahi, and were also found in French colonial regiments. They were a common theme in Régamey's oeuvre, which principally comprised depictions of horses and horsemen. He does not seem to have visited Africa, but made many sketches of Arab horsemen, probably after other artists' designs. His visual memory was said to be considerable and enabled him to recreate details and compositional formulae in his atelier.

This painting was commissioned by Constantine Alexander Ionides from the artist, whom he had probably met through the intermediary of Legros during the winter 1870-71. At that time, Régamey was contributing to the Illustrated London News. Although the painting is signed and dated 1871, letters from the artist in Paris to Constantine Alexander Ionides dated between March and October 1873 (private collection) suggest that it was still unfinished in October 1873.

Régamey made at least two preparatory studies for this painting: a sketch in pastel in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, (RF29262) dated 14th March 1871 and another in pen and ink, Musée du Louvre (RF 29273).

English: 19th-century French art is marked by a succession of movements based on a more or less close relationship with nature. At the beginning of the century, Romantic artists were fascinated by nature they interpreted as a mirror of the mind. They investigated human nature and personality, the folk culture, the national and ethnic origins, the medieval era, the exotic, the remote, the mysterious and the occult. This movement was heralded in France by such painter as Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). In its opposition to academic art and its demand for a modern style Realism continued the aims of the Romantics. They assumed that reality could be perceived without distortion or idealization, and sought after a mean to combine the perception of the individual with objectivity. This reaction in French painting against the Grand Manner is well represented by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) who wrote a 'Manifesto of Realism', entitled Le Réalisme published in Paris in 1855. These ideas were challenged by the group of the Barbizon painters, who formed a recognizable school from the early 1830s to the 1870s and developed a free, broad and rough technique. They were mainly concerned by landscape painting and the rendering of light. The works of Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña (1807-1876), Jules Dupré (1811-1889), Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), Constant Troyon (1810-1865) and Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) anticipate somehow the plein-air landscapes of the Impressionists.