Moustafa Farroukh

Moustafa Farroukh was a Lebanese painter, born in 1901 in the Basta quarter of Beirut, who died in Beirut on 16 February 1957. He painted landscapes, portraits and nudes in oil and watercolour, and also worked as an illustrator and caricaturist.

He trained with Habib Serour until 1924 and studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome from 1924 to 1927. In Paris, from 1929 to 1931, he worked under Paul Chabas and others. His mountain landscapes leave out roads and villages in favour of sun, rock and trees, and his portraits range from officials and intellectuals to villagers and Beirut residents. Works in Mathaf, Doha, include the ink drawing Hajia Mosque (1927).

Farroukh was among the first painters in Beirut to hold solo exhibitions of independently made work: in a private residence in 1928 and at the American University of Beirut in 1929, where he later taught. He showed in the Salon des Amis des Arts and at the New York World's Fair (1939), for which he sat on the Lebanese pavilion's organising committee. His 1947 lecture The Forerunners of Lebanese Art is an early history of the subject, and he designed several series of Lebanese postage stamps.