Nubian Man in a Cairo Interior

Born in 1856 in Galkovitz, a small agricultural town in Hungary, the Orientalist painter, Arthur Von Ferraris trained in Vienna under Joseph Matthäus Aigner (1818–1886) and later moved to Paris in 1876. There he studied with Jules Lefebvre (1836–1911) at the Ecole Académie Julian, and then with Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. His attention to detail reflects the influence of his teacher Gérôme, who encouraged him to travel to Cairo in the winter of 1885 in the company of the Austrian Orientalist painter, Ludwig Deutsch (1855–1935). Ferraris exhibited his first Orientalist painting at the Paris Salon in 1890, entitled "Visit of the Grand Sheikh to Cairo University." He shared a fascination for Cairo’s Islamic art and architecture along with his travelling companions, the Austrian painters Deutsch and Rudolf Ernst (1854–1932). The three artists’ works share remarkable similarities in their treatment of architecture, which has prompted conjecture that they visited sites together and worked collaboratively. This is also evident from their use of the same models for their staged paintings, as the man in this painting also appears in a work by Deutsch entitled, "The Nubian Guard" (1902).

This oil painting displays Ferraris’ skill in rendering Islamic interiors and figures with painstaking attention to detail and clearly shows the influence of earlier Salon Orientalists, including his teacher Gérôme and his contemporary, Deutsch. It is full of vivid colours, strong light, and architectural and soft furnishing details. Ferraris probably worked from photographs along with his sketches and maquettes. While the extent of his travels in the Middle East is not known, his subject matter suggests that he visited Egypt, Turkey, and North Africa.

In this tableau, an immaculately dressed Nubian man emerges from an interior room of a sumptuously ornamented Mamluk or Ottoman period building into another interior space with inlaid marble floors and walls, a vertical water feature, hanging oil lamp, and an appliqued curtain (khayamiya). He is dressed in a yellow Egyptian jellabiya (or gallabiyah) with long, slitted sleeves decorated with applied black cord and embroidery on the front and sleeves, wearing a striped textile as a waist sash with a matching turban and shoulder scarf (possibly the tails of the turban). A leather belt around his waist carries a long dagger with an ivory hilt while the man grips a flintlock pistol tucked into his waist sash. He wears yellow leather shoes and walks on a blue carpet runner. The painting is signed and dated Arthur Ferraris, Paris, 1888 (lower left) and is mounted in a modern rococo revival frame made of plaster on pine with a white painted finish and gold highlights. The painting was exhibited at the Paris International Expositions in 1889 and 1900.