Art-Belly-Pilgrims Going to Mecca TB03

Please drop this item in rural OR Premium Member Only caches.  Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean and prevents tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take the travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission is needed to leave the U.S.

Photos in the travel bug logs are appreciated.  I will be re-post them here, where they can be seen by other cachers.

This is one of a series of travel bugs made to recognize paintings seen, and admired by the bug owner. A digital copy of this painting was downloaded from the internet. The copy was reduced in size and proportions cropped to accommodate the laminating materials available to the owner. Regrettably these processes diminish the effort of the artist. One truly must see the original in person to fully appreciate the work. The text below is a mixture of my own observations and material gleaned from the internet (mostly Wikipedia and Web Gallery).

Léon Auguste Adolphe Belly (1827–1877) was chiefly a French landscape painter.  In 1850-51 he travelled to Greece, Syria, and the Black Sea.  In 1853 he made his debut at the Paris Salon, exhibiting four landscapes of Nablus and Beirut, and of the shores of the Dead Sea, which attracted critical acclaim.  In 1855-56 he visited Egypt, traveling up the Nile in the company of another painter, Edouard Imer. A second trip to Egypt in 1856 was largely spent making studies for this painting, Pilgrims Going to Mecca.   We saw it in October 2012 in the Musée d'Orsay.  It is a very large, striking work and dominates the salon in which it is displayed.