Rudolf Ernst

Rudolf Ernst is today one of the most celebrated and sought-after Orientalist artists of the 19th Century. Born in Vienna in 1854 and son of the architect Leopold Ernst, the young Rudolf received his early artistic training at the Vienna Academy. During his last year of schooling, he won a scholarship which allowed him to travel first through Italy, then Morocco, Spain and Tunis before settling in Paris and taking French citizenship. In Paris he made contact amongst other Orientalists, and made himself known to artist circles. He continued to travel throughout the 1890s, visiting Turkey and Egypt. While on his travels, the artist bought artifacts, pottery, kaftans and textiles, which he brought back to France and used over and over again to enhance the authenticity of his paintings. Heavily influenced by the academic style of Jean-Léon Gérôme, Rudolf Ernst concentrated on exactitude in detail and intensity of color. Rudolf strived for photographic exactitude and academic precision while enhancing the composition with his signature authenticity in vibrant and elegant color combinations.
Ernst belongs to the second generation of Orientalist painters, such as Gerome, Bauernfeind, Deutsch and Ernst were more interested in depicting scenes from the daily life of the East such as Bedouins gathering in sun bathed deserts, Bashi-Bazouks resting, Nubians guarding palaces or harem women engaged in leisurely activities. The technique of setting lavishly dressed figures against intricate backdrops was a favorite of Ernst's, one which permitted him to show off his skill at rendering different exotic textures and surfaces, from the richness of clothing to the reflective properties of tiles. His imagination was fired by the glorious mosque interiors, the picturesque street scenes and above all the sophisticated pastimes of citizens in their quarters, and his experiences would forever shape his future painting career. The present work perfectly encapsulates the combination of detail and imagined setting. Such themes were often to be found in Ernst’s oeuvre and mark him as one of the true masters of the genre. His realistic style, complete with the various props, carpets, ewers, tiles, screens that the artist brought back from his trips to North Africa and Turkey, lend the scene its prodigious sense of veracity. The viewer is, in fact, confronted to a theater prop which the absolute technical mastery of the artist transforms into an evocative image of an 'Orient', most importantly of a notoriously forbidden space that extremely few people would have had access to, and which fascinated Western viewers