Old Moorish gateway, Alhambra

As a young artist in his home city of Birmingham, Henry Stanier had been an active exhibitor of flower pieces and historical genre scenes. Later, in the 1860s and 1870s, he painted Egyptian landscapes and city views before eventually devoting himself to Spanish subjects. Inspired by the rich cultural legacy of Granada’s Moorish past, Stanier produced a number of carefully observed architectural subjects, sometimes incorporating picturesque or exotic figures in an orientalist vein, as seen in this painting which represents the interior facade of the Gate of Justice in the Alhambra.