Rudolf Ernst

Private Collection, Switzerland

Purchased by the present owner in 2015

Paris, Salon, 1911, no. 670 (as Tombeau du sultan Mehmed)

This rare Turkish subject by Ernst depicts the interior of the Yesil Türbe (Green Tomb) in Bursa, one of the finest examples of early Ottoman architecture and the burial place of Sultan Mehmet I (ruled 1413-1421). The interior attracted a number of Western artists, including John Frederick Lewis, who depicted it in a watercolour now in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. 

It is unusual to find a painting by Ernst that depicts an actual place. So often his paintings were imagined, worked up from photos, props, and his own memory, but ultimately fictitious. Here, the mausoleum is minutely observed, attended by its guardian. The mihrab, a niche set into the middle of the qibla wall of a building indicating the direction of Mecca, is also clearly visible.