Important Works from the Najd Collection, Part II

Important Works from the Najd Collection, Part II

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 107. RUDOLF ERNST | THE PALACE GUARD.

RUDOLF ERNST | THE PALACE GUARD

Lot Closed

June 11, 01:06 PM GMT

Estimate

80,000 - 120,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

RUDOLF ERNST

Austrian

1854-1932

THE PALACE GUARD


signed R. Ernst. lower right

oil on panel

61 by 50cm., 24 by 19½in.


Please note: Condition 11 of the Conditions of Business for Buyers (Online Only) is not applicable to this lot. 


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Sale: Christie's, London, 3 November 1977, lot 107

Mr Aiguier (sale: Sotheby's, London, 22 November 1983, lot 18)

Mathaf Gallery, London (purchased at the above sale)

Purchased from the above 

Caroline Juler, Najd Collection of Orientalist Paintings, London, 1991, p. 82, catalogued & illustrated, p. 83, cited

London, Mathaf Gallery, Spring Exhibition of Important Orientalist Paintings of the 19th century, 1984, no. 1, illustrated in the catalogue

In this richly finished work, a man stands tall at the entrance of a Nasrid palace, yielding an Ottoman yataghan and dagger to discourage any trespassers. The man also holds a weapon which appears to be a seventeenth-century Eastern European steel war-hammer, known as a nadziak. 


The composition is an interesting mix of architectural and ethnographic elements. The colourful tiles and Moorish decorations recall the melding of styles of the Alhambra palace in Granada, while the metal urn to the right appears to be a late nineteenth-century Indian reproduction of the type sold to Western travellers. No doubt it was one of the many props Ernst himself acquired on his travels and brought home to Paris with him.