The Guardsmen

Description In a Turkish guardroom or barracks, two soldiers are seated conversing. One with African features gesticulates while addressing the other who listens impassively, smoking his long pipe. On the ground beside the speaker, are a cloth-wrapped bundle, a couple of melons, and a pipe. Three other soldiers are discernible in the background. Behind the figure smoking is a crumbling masonry wall, a recurrent motif in Decamps' pictures.

Conservation

Date	Description	Narrative
10/01/1957	Treatment	cleaned
11/14/1957	Treatment	cleaned; coated; loss compensation
9/13/1983	Loan Consideration	examined for loan
2/24/1984	Treatment	cleaned; coated
6/10/2009	Treatment	loss compensation; other

Exhibitions

• Alexandre Gabriel Decamps. The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown. 1984.

Provenance Ed. L. Jacobson Sale, April 28-29, 1876, no. 22; Charles T. Yerkes Sale, American Art Association, New York, April 5-8, 1910, no. 13; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1910, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Inscriptions [Signature] signed lower left: DECAMPS 1841

Credit Acquired by Henry Walters, 1910