Raphael von Ambros

Private collection, Los Angeles, since circa 1965

The minute detail and refined modelling in this portrait are testament to the artist's academic training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, then in Vienna under Hans Makart, and finally in Paris where he was influenced by the work of Jean-Léon Gérôme and of Ludwig Deutsch, who had settled in Paris in 1878. The parallels between the work of the latter and that of von Ambros are striking not only in the application of colour and in technique, but also in the choice of subject. The guard holds a rifle and wears a Ottoman long knife (yataghan) in his belt.