CHARLES WILDA | THE GUARD

H. Thompson

Purchased by the present owner in the 1980s

Before a doorway in a Cairo street, a Nubian guard holding an Ottoman alam or staff chaperones a young woman outside. The entrance he guards incorporates many of the architectural elements found in other Orientalist works of the time, from the blue iznik tiles to the highly decorated door which resembles the wooden panels recorded by the French artist and scholar Achille Prisse d'Avennes (1807-79).