Rudolf Ernst

In this richly finished, and for Ernst highly original composition, a Nubian guard, armed with a flintlock gun and yataghan sword, escorts a noblewoman on camelback along a dusty desert road, possibly part of a larger camel caravan outside of the picture plane. Despite the unforgiving conditions, both figures appear relaxed and perfectly turned out, their silk robes and skin glinting in the sunlight. The myriad of fabrics, textiles, and weaponry against a backdrop that is reminiscent of the Sinai, make this painting, like many of Ernst's best works, a veritable tapestry in pattern and texture, a cumulative memory of his disparate travels in the Orient.  

After studying at the Vienna Academy, Ernst travelled to Rome and, in the 1880s, to Spain, Morocco, and Tunisia. Later travels would take him to Egypt and, in 1890, to Turkey. In 1876, Ernst settled in France, exhibiting regularly at the Salon de la Société des artistes français and eventually taking French nationality. After starting out painting portraits and genre scenes, from 1885 Ernst turned exclusively to painting Orientalist subjects, which he worked up from the sketches, photographs, souvenirs, and memories accumulated during his travels. Almost all his paintings were executed in his studio in Paris, which he decorated in an eclectic Eastern style, and in which he would paint wearing a taboosh, in order to transport himself mentally into the world created in his paintings.