View full screen - View 1 of Lot 2. The Nile at Bulak.

Property from a Swiss Private Collection

Adolf von Meckel

The Nile at Bulak

Lot Closed

October 26, 02:07 PM GMT

Estimate

40,000 - 60,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Property from a Swiss Private Collection

Adolf von Meckel

German

1856 - 1893

The Nile at Bulak


signed and dated .AMeckel. / .1888. lower left

oil on canvas

Unframed: 131 by 202cm., 51½ by 79½in.

Framed: 173 by 245cm., 68 by 96½in.

Acquired by the grandfather of the present owner; thence by descent
Munich, Jubiläumsausstellung, 1888
Probably, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 1890
Friedrich von Boetticher, Malerwerke des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Minden, 1891-1901, vol. II, p. 3, no. 17
This panorama brilliantly evokes the bustling mercantile district of Bulak in Cairo on a hot afternoon. Dhows fill the banks of the Nile, their crews mingling with local tradesmen on the beach. Meckel, a pupil of the Norwegian Hans Gude at the Karlsruhe Academy, first experienced Egypt in 1880, on a two-year journey to the Middle East with fellow artists Eugen Bracht and Carl Schirm. Further visits to Cairo followed in the 1880s. The trips gave rise to a series of monumental views, another of which, dated 1889, of fishermen on Lake Mariout, was sold in these rooms on 24 April 2018.