Etienne DINET: Algeria, Young girls playing in Laghouat, Original signed lithograph

Alphonse-Etienne Dinet : orientalist french painter, he became later "Nasreddine Dinet" after he converted to Islam. He was born on March 28th 1861 in Paris, and died on December 24th in 1929 in Paris. He entered the Ecole des beaux-arts de Paris in 1881, and became in 1882 the student of William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian. He exhibited his works for the first time the same year, at the Salon des artistes français. He painted his first orientalist paintings in 1884 during a trip to Algeria. In 1889, he received the silver medal at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, and founded the Société nationale des beaux-arts notably with Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes, and Rodin. In 1900, he was given the gold medal at the Universal Exhibition in Munich. From 1905 on, he sepnt 3/4 of his time in Algeria, in Bou-Saâda where he bought a house. In 1908, he announced to his close friends that he had converted to Islam for several years already, and changed later his name to "Nasr-Eddine". He participated to the edification of the Paris Mosque, inaugurated in 1926.