Rudolf Swoboda

A gift to the mother of the present owner in the early 1960s; thence by descent

Munich, Jahresausstellung von Kunstwerken aller Nationen im königlichen Glaspalast, 1891, no. 2940 (titled Taubenfütterung in Cairo)

The canvas has a fine lining. There is some very fine drying craquelure in the paint surface, notably in the dark pigments of the doorway. Ultra-violet light reveals areas of uneven fluorescence due to old residual varnish, and some scattered very thin, carefully applied strokes of inpainting to the three female figures, in the flying pigeon towards the upper centre, a spot below the door to the right and some other small scattered spots. The picture is in good condition and ready to hang. Presented in a decorative gilt frame.
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The seeds of Swoboda's passion for Orientalist painting were sown by his uncle, the painter Carl Leopold Müller (lot 18), under whom he trained from 1878 to 1884, and whom he visited in Cairo in 1879. Over the next decade Swoboda undertook no fewer than six visits to Egypt, which were to be the inspiration for much of his artistic output. His final trip was in 1891, the year of the present work, which would have been painted with the streets of Cairo fresh in his mind. His Orientalist works won him international fame - as a court painter to Queen Victoria for whom he worked from 1885 to 1892, in 1886 he travelled as far east as India by way of Afghanistan and Kashmir.

Poised and grounded in reality, Swoboda's paintings are based on his observations of the daily life of the Egyptians he met on his travels. Presented in its impressive, original frame, and exhibited at the prestigious annual salon at the royal Glaspalast, Munich, the year it was painted, A Cairene Courtyard counts among Swoboda’s chef-d’oeuvres. Far more elaborate than the figure studies and portraits for which he is more usually known, it displays extraordinary skill in rendering light, colour and texture within an elaborate composition.