Alexandre Bida

Alexandre Bida (Toulouse, 1813 – Buhl, Haut-Rhin, 1895) was a French painter and engraver of the Romantic period, best known for his Orientalist scenes and his illustrations of the Bible.

He arrived in Paris in 1836 and for a time worked in the studio of Eugène Delacroix, though he soon developed a style of his own, marked by careful drawing and precision. After a period in his native Toulouse, he travelled to Greece and Turkey in 1843 and returned to Paris in 1846. The following year he began to make himself known with his first drawings, and in 1848 he won a second-class medal. In 1850 he worked in Egypt, where he gathered a series of Eastern figures that he later used in his exhibited works. He later spent time in Constantinople, Crimea and Syria. In 1855 he received a first-class medal and the commission to decorate the Exposition Universelle.

As an illustrator, he contributed to Aquitaine et Languedoc by Justin Cénac-Moncaut. At the Exposition Universelle of 1867 he presented the drawing Le Massacre des mameluks (The Massacre of the Mamluks), which evokes the 1811 massacre in Cairo and is now held in the Department of Graphic Arts at the Louvre. His biblical work culminated in Les Saints Évangiles (1873), in which the four Gospels were accompanied by twenty-eight etchings. The work was praised for its portrayal of a Christ who is reverent, refined, dignified and strong.

Among his pupils was Jean-Paul Laurens. Bida died in Buhl in 1895, at around eighty-one years of age. His output also includes drawings such as And Jesus Said: This Day Is Salvation. Come to This House, held by the Walters Art Museum.