Rudolf Ernst

Mathaf Gallery, London

Sale: Christie's, London, 19 June 1992, lot 88

Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

The Perfume Makers is an evocation of perfect feminine conviviality and complicity. Three young women are seen working in harmony together; as one girl enters the room carrying a basket of roses, her companions pluck the petals and place them in the urn by their sides, ready for crushing to extract their aromatic essence. While the scene is one of tranquility and modesty, the luxuriant and plentiful petals whose scent is almost palpable, the azur blue sky and distant sun-drenched seashore glimpsed through the doorway, the colourful tiles, and the eastern copper and earthenware lend the painting an unspoken sensuality and exotic atmosphere.

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. 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, the better to think himself into the world created in his paintings.