MAURICE BOMPARD Rodez, 1857 - Paris, 1913 Lunchtime at the Oasis Signed Maurice Bompard, lower right Oil on canvas, 73X100 cm Maurice Bompard moved to Marseille at a young age in 1865, where he studied painting with Dominique Antoine Magaud. He later moved to Paris, where he was a pupil of the Orientalist painter Gustave Boulanger and the historical painter Jules Lefebvre, at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. His first exhibition was in 1878. Four years later, he received a scholarship that allowed him to visit Germany, Italy, Spain and Tunisia. In 1889, he left Paris for three months for Biskra in the south of Algeria and returned numerous times since then, following in the footsteps of Eugène Fromentin who set many of his paintings in Biskra. His works can be admired at the Musée Denys-Puech, the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille.