| Girls Dancing Around an Obelisk | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Hubert Robert |
| Year | 1798 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 119.7 cm× 99 cm(47.1 in× 39 in) |
| Location | Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal |
Girls Dancing Around an Obelisk is an oil-on-canvas painting by French painter Hubert Robert, made in 1798. It is held at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts since 1964. [1] [2]
Hubert Robert had a fascination with the Ancient Egypt, typical of the pre-romanticism of his time. This painting depicts, in an imaginary Egyptian architectural setting, where the Giza pyramids can be seen in the distance, a group of nine young female dancers, wearing white dresses in an antique style and blue and red ribbons at the waist, performing a farandole around the base of an Egyptian obelisk, whose truncated top lies on the ground on the right of the composition, in the shadows. A broken Sphinx is seen at the left, behind the obelisk. The scene is completed by a group of people dressed in more modern attire detailing the ruins, in the lower left, and by musicians playing their instruments perched on a ledge of the obelisk. The tiny figures illustrate the huge dimension, at the distance, of the pyramids. [3] [4]
Some have interpreted the painting as a symbolic reference to the Masonic lodge of the Nine Sisters, and also to the opposition between the ancient and the modern world, or to the Egyptian campaign taken by Napoleon. [5]
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