Vittorio Amadeo, 5th Count Preziosi

(Maltese, 1816-1882)

The Darb al-Ahmar, Cairo 63.5 x 47 cm. (25 x 18 1/2 in.)

Footnotes

Preziosi enjoyed considerable renown, in the mid-nineteenth century, as a painter of the diverse and colourful street life of Istanbul. The success of his coloured lithographs Stamboul. Recollections of Eastern Life prompted him a few years later to publish a similar collection devoted to Cairo, Souvenirs du Caire, following a visit to that city in 1862 in the company of H.C. du Bois, the Dutch envoy to the Ottoman court. One plate, Fellahs, marchands de gateaux et de sirops, is a modified and less complex version of the present watercolour, depicting only four figures instead of the numerous throng of characters, both male and female, young and old, that are portrayed in the watercolour.

The street, identifiable from the distinctive decorative features of the Mosque-Mausoleum of the Amir Khayrbak in the background, is the Darb al-Ahmar, known at this point on its lengthy route as the Bab al-Wazir. It was one of the busiest and best-known thoroughfares in Cairo, and was often depicted by European artists. Preziosi’s south-easterly view down the street allows him to include not only a famous example of Cairene religious architecture, but also its characteristic domestic buildings, with shops on the ground floor and residences with their mashrabiya windows above. This mix of religious, residential and commercial is reflected in the diversity of the figures portrayed in the foreground: the sakiya or water-seller, the desert Arab with rosary and rifle, the urban Egyptian wearing a green turban and striped galabeya, and the old man resting his basket of maize on his donkey, led by a Nubian slave. There are also four women: two Muslim fellaha types with henna tattoos and bracelets on their arms, correctly veiled; the other two, fairer-skinned, one possibly Circassian, portrayed half veiled, the other, probably non-Muslim, unveiled, allowing Preziosi’s western viewers a glimpse of their pretty faces; their babies and young blind boy that they tend, add to the variety of the scene and indulge the European taste for sentimentality.

The present watercolour, dated 1871, was presumably based on sketches that Preziosi had made in Cairo nine years earlier, although a further visit around 1870, during a decade when his movements are little documented, cannot be ruled out. Clearly such images remained popular, since both the Cairo and the Istanbul volumes were reissued in Paris in 1883.

We are grateful to Briony Llewellyn and Charles Newton for their assistance in cataloguing this lot.