Works Exhibited in Aid of the Colonisation of Algeria by the Alsatians and Lorrainers

This charity exhibition, held at the Palais Bourbon in Paris in 1874, raised funds to support the resettlement of Alsatians and Lorrainers who had chosen French citizenship after France ceded those territories to the German Empire under the Treaty of Frankfurt in 1871. The French government had offered free land in Algeria to optants who committed to emigrating there, and the exhibition was organised to sustain that colonisation programme. More than 650 paintings and drawings were assembled from private Parisian collections, making it one of the largest loan exhibitions of old masters seen in the city to that point.

Vermeer’s The Geographer appeared as catalogue number 332. The painting was in Paris at the time, passing through the hands of dealers and collectors in the years following its sale at the Péreire brothers’ auction in March 1872. The art critic Paul Mantz reviewed the exhibition at length in theGazette des Beaux-Arts the same year, in three instalments covering the Dutch and Flemish works alongside the French and Italian holdings.