Rudolph Ernst

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This picture is in lovely condition. It is painted on a single, unreinforced piece of mahogany. The paint layer is clean, lightly varnished and there appear to be no retouches of note. All of Ernst's complex technique is in very good state. The small specks of brown pigment in the tiles in the upper right may appear like yellowed varnish, however they are in fact pigment. The picture should be hung as is.
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In both subject and style, Nubian Guard demonstrates the qualities for which Rudolph Ernst would become best known, and his works so highly prized. After studying at the Vienna Academy, Ernst traveled to Rome and, in the 1880s, to Spain, Morocco, and Tunisia.  (Later travels would take him to Egypt and Turkey.)   An early interest in portraiture, images of children, and genre scenes would give way to a variety of Orientalist subjects, based upon the numerous sketches, photographs, and souvenirs he accumulated during his travels. The figure of an elaborately costumed male guard, positioned at the entrance to a palace, harem, or otherwise sacrosanct space, would become a favorite motif of the artist.

In this dramatic example, a Nubian guard stands before an elaborately carved wooden door.  In ornament and design, it resembles those portals recorded by the great French artist and scholar Achille Prisse d'Avennes (1807-1879), and may owe as much to such large-format, richly colored lithographs as to sketches done on site.  One of the hallmarks of Ernst's style, in fact, is its unapologetic tendency to pastiche - the carpet here may be Talish, the guard's shawl, with its distinctive metallic thread and multicolored stripes, may have been purchased in the Egyptian weaving village of Kerdasa, and the helmet is an anachronistic reference to the armor once worn by Mamluk soldiers across the Ottoman Empire. The faience tiles in the background and the massive bronze oil lamp at left may also have personal meanings: Ernst would himself attempt the faience technique after an inspirational trip to Turkey in 1890, and the construction of the lamp is recorded in a series of charming images (fig. 1).  Rather than detracting from the work, such eclectic details add immeasurable value: this is not an imperfect ethnographic portrait or a superficial study in pattern and texture.  This is a reflection of Ernst's own career, and a cumulative memory of disparate Middle Eastern travels.