Victor Eeckhout (Antwerp, 1821 - Tangier, 1879/1880) 'Young Berber in Tangier' Oil on canvas. Signed and situated Tangier. 105 x 76 cm. A wonderful painting of the Orientalist genre featuring a young woman posing, absorbed in her thoughts, while in the background, bustling daily life unfolds in a souk around a mosque. The painter shows us the minaret presiding over the souk, which we believe to have identified as being from the Mosque of Sidi Bou Abib. Due to the attire of the young woman, her jewellery, and tattoos, we can unmistakably identify her as originating from the Moroccan Atlas, as in the rest of the country, people did not wear tattoos but adorned their skin with henna drawings. The painting has added margins, a new stretcher, and restoration on the back due to a tear. Victor Eeckhout was a Belgian painter, designer, and engraver known especially for his Orientalist paintings. Born in Antwerp, he trained in the art of painting with his father, Jacobus Josephus Eeckhout, a prominent Flemish painter who directed the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague. As a founding member of the 'Société royale belge des aquarellistes,' he debuted at the Brussels Salon in 1848 and exhibited two paintings in 1863 at the Salon des Refusés, the same year Monet exhibited the famous 'Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe' ('Luncheon on the Grass'), now displayed in the Musée d'Orsay. Precisely in this French museum, Eeckhout's work 'Fantasia devant Tanger' (1869), a brush and charcoal drawing on paper, is preserved (inv. RF 31892). When he painted this artwork, as we can deduce from the title, he had already settled in Tangier, a coastal city in Morocco where he arrived after a short stay in Paris between 1865 and 1866. In Tangier, he resided until his death and specialised exclusively in Orientalist painting. There, he also met Jean-François Portaels, considered to be the founder of the Belgian Orientalist school. The painting we have in the auction is also from this period, and so is, probably, an oil on canvas kept in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: 'Wedding procession' (inv. 2017.202.9), where he portrays a lively scene in the Moroccan city of Fez, in which he himself was a witness, as indicated by the MET's cataloguing based on the inscription on the canvas.