Nazem Al Jaafari (born in 1918 in Damascus

Damascus

Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...

, Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

) is considered the founder of impressionism

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

in Syria. al-Jaafari studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo between 1944-1947, after which he returned to Syria and worked as an art teacher in secondary schools and taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus One of his greatest achievements as an artist is the documentation of the old quarters of Damascus as it existed at the turn of the twentieth century including lifestyles, designs, and fashion.

His body of work consists of over 7000 drawings — all still part of the artist’s collection as he rarely sells his work.

Nazem Al Jaafari was one of the pioneer impressionists of Syrian painting. Impressionism remained the most popular style in Syria both before and after the Second World War. Al Jaafari was a recluse and seldom sold any of his work because he was hoping the state would build a museum devoted to him.

Yet his work was eventually collected by the Museum of Damascus and in by several private collectors. Recently his work was auctioned at Bohnam's Dubai in 2008 and at Ayyam Auctions in 2010 (Beirut).