ARTHUR VON FERRARIS | THE MUSICIAN

Sale: Sotheby's, London, 25 November 1981, lot 34

Mathaf Gallery, London

Purchased from the above

Caroline Juler, Najd Collection of Orientalist Paintings, London, 1991, p. 110, catalogued & illustrated

Lynne Thornton, Les Orientalistes, Peintres Voyageurs 1828-1908, Paris, 2001, p. 266, catalogued & illustrated

Set in Cairo before a door surmounted by elaborate decorations and blue tiles, the work depicts a group of men gathered around a rababa player. Seated by the entrance in his ragged clothes, the musician is absorbed in his playing as he entrances his audience.

One of the oldest string instruments, dating back to the eighth century, the rababa was originally from Arabia and Persia and was introduced into North Africa in the tenth century. The round body of the rababa is usually covered in sheep skin and connected to a pegbox by a long neck with two or three strings. Although varying in shape and size, the instrument depicted here is clearly the two-string Egyptian version also known as ‘fiddle of the Nile’.

Ferraris studied in Paris with the renowned academic painters Jean-Léon Gérôme and Jules Lefebvre. It may have been Gérôme who encouraged Ferraris to travel to Cairo with his friend and fellow Austrian artist, Ludwig Deutsch. By the late 1880s, von Ferraris had set up his Parisian studio with another compatriot painter, Charles Wilda (see lot 100). Over the following years von Ferraris moved back to Vienna where he continued painting Orientalist subjects inspired by his frequent trips through the Middle East.