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Lot Essay
Best known for Ottoman Empire paintings of elaborately costumed merchants, guard, sentinels or pashas as well as a few portraits from his travels to Turkey in the 1890s, Rudolf Ernst was a leader of the second generation of the Orientalist movement and the leader of the movement in his native Austria. These second generation Orientalist artists such as Ernst and his compatriot, Ludwig Deutsch, moved away from the more historical subjects of their predecessors and demonstrated more interest in painting images of daily life.
Most of the objects Ernst includes in his paintings were from his own personal collection. Similar to Jean-Léon Gérôme and Ludwig Deutsch, with whom he was close friends, Ernst had gathered a sizeable group of artifacts, tiles, lamps, pottery, silks, satins and kaftans from his travels to Moorish Spain, Morocco, Tunis and Istanbul during the 1880s. In fact, Ernst's studio, crammed full of these artifacts, resembled a stage-set. The paintings he created there were visual anthologies, combining elements of these props with his own sketches and professional photographs. Almost photographic in their detail, his canvases are notable for their polished paint surfaces. The present work perfectly encapsulates the combination of detail and imagined setting: the carefully rendered and sumptuous surfaces of tiles, carpets, stone, architecture and the warm diffuse light of an interior, are crafted together to create an overall composition artfully designed to dazzle an audience fascinated by the Orient.
Most of the objects Ernst includes in his paintings were from his own personal collection. Similar to Jean-Léon Gérôme and Ludwig Deutsch, with whom he was close friends, Ernst had gathered a sizeable group of artifacts, tiles, lamps, pottery, silks, satins and kaftans from his travels to Moorish Spain, Morocco, Tunis and Istanbul during the 1880s. In fact, Ernst's studio, crammed full of these artifacts, resembled a stage-set. The paintings he created there were visual anthologies, combining elements of these props with his own sketches and professional photographs. Almost photographic in their detail, his canvases are notable for their polished paint surfaces. The present work perfectly encapsulates the combination of detail and imagined setting: the carefully rendered and sumptuous surfaces of tiles, carpets, stone, architecture and the warm diffuse light of an interior, are crafted together to create an overall composition artfully designed to dazzle an audience fascinated by the Orient.