LUDWIG DEUTSCH | THE SENTINEL

Private Collection, Europe

Mathaf Gallery, London

Purchased from the above

Caroline Juler, Najd Collection of Orientalist Paintings, London, 1991, p. 50, cited, p. 57, catalogued & illustrated

Martina Haja & Günther Wimmer, Les Orientalistes des écoles allemandes et autrichiennes, Courbevoie, 2000, p. 203, catalogued & illustrated

Krems, Kunsthalle Krems, Harem: the Private World of the Orient, 2005, illustrated in the catalogue

Standing against the inlaid marble wall of a palace with its Mamluk tiles, flintlock gun in hand and khanjar strapped to his waist, a robed sentinel returns the viewer's gaze. On the right, one of a pair of massive copper-plated doors, resembling those at the mausoleum of Sultan Hassan in Cairo, affords a tantalising glimpse into the inner sanctum; however, the viewer is left to imagine who - or what - is being guarded. The doors themselves are strikingly similar to those in Rudolf Ernst's The Dozing Guard (formerly Najd Collection, sold in these rooms on 22 October 2019), which may suggest a common influence in prints by the French artist and scholar Achille Prisse d'Avennes (1807-79). On a mother-of-pearl inlaid gueridon table stands a brass vase, probably contemporary, inspired by an earlier Mamluk pattern.