SOTHEBY’S, one of the world’s leading international auction houses, is delighted to announce the sale of a striking scene of Cairo - entitled Le Muezzin - in its sale of 19th Century European Paintings in London on Wednesday, 2nd June, 2010. Painted in 1865, the evocative painting by the French Orientalist artist Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) captures the moment on a hot afternoon when a muezzin begins his call to prayer atop a minaret, and Cairo falls silent below him. The high dome seen in the background of the scene is believed to be the famed mosque of Sultan Hassan.
With great mastery, the celebrated French artist evokes the utter stillness both of the city and of the desert air and the heat is made almost palpable to the viewer through the contrast between the shade cast by the minaret and the brilliant, hot light below. The painting has been in the same private collection for over 30 years and it now comes to the market with an estimate of £350,000-500,000.
A leading name of the Orientalist genre, Jean-Léon Gérôme visited Cairo many times and the details of this painting demonstrate both his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Middle East - recorded in sketches he made on location - and his profound respect for some of its most distinctive cultural traditions. He had a particular fascination for the colours and geometric spaces of Islamic architecture as well as a great respect for the straightforward, unselfconscious clergy-free prayer of Muslim worship and these are subject matters that are seen throughout his oeuvre. A strongly anti-clerical Frenchman himself, Gérôme admired the clergy-free independence of prayer that he encountered on his journeys to Egypt.
Talking about the painting, Lord Poltimore, Deputy Chairman, Sotheby’s Europe, comments: “This captivating painting is a classic example of Jean-Léon Gérôme at his best. With its incredible attention to detail, from the impressively observed architecture of the minaret to the Cairo skyline below, the painting shows that Gérôme not only took great interest in his subject but really knew it well. The painting dates from 1865, the year that the French artist submitted one of his most important Cairo pictures at the Paris Salon, and it also relates to a larger - almost identical - composition by him, which today hangs in a public museum in the US.”
The appearance of this painting at auction is most timely, given the planned retrospective on Gérôme at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles between June and September and then at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris later in the year. The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme will be the first major comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work in nearly 40 years.
Further works in the sale of 19th Century European Paintings with an Egyptian theme include:
- On the Banks of the Nile by the Italian artist Hermann Corrodi, estimated at £40,000-60,000;
- The Pyramids at Gizeh, Morning by Germany’s Ernst Koerner, estimated at £40,000-60,000 and also his The Temple of Karnak at Luxor, with an estimate of £15,000-25,000
- The Road to the Pyramids by the British artist David Bates, estimated at £6,000-8,000
- French artist’s Eugène Girardet’s Flight into Egypt, estimated at £8,000-12,000
- Auguste Veillon’s The Temple of Philae, Aswan, estimated at £10,000-15,000
- The Mosque of Khair Bek, Cairo by John Varley II and with an estimate of £5,000-7,000
- The Pottery Seller in Old Cairo by the US artist, Charles Sprague Pearce, and estimated at £10,000-15,000
