Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from the private collection, London
Property from the collection Fahr-El Nissa Zeid's personal assistant, England
Gifted directly from the artist to the above owner, circa 1970's


"..During my first trip to the orient in Baghdad, I saw in the great expanses, the Bedouins... six or seven silhouettes that came from the depth of the horizon, as if flying over the sands.. They had on top of their heads a pyramid of pots of yoghurt, that looked from afar like very high chimneys ... and their veils floated in this gold [hue] that was ablaze"

- Fahrlenissa Zeid


Linear Impressions
Adila Laïdi-Hanieh, PhD.

This stunning work marks an important phase in Fahrelnissa Zeid's life and artistic output. As the wife of a member of the Hashemite royal family of Iraq, she visited the country for the first time in 1938, then in 1944. Her sojourns resulted in a prolific output of visual impressions, captured in sketchbooks held by her estate. The existence of this unique sketch from that period, and its availability for sale is a remarkable occurrence.

Fahrelnissa Zeid was eager to know her new country. From her Baghdad base, she undertook excursions to Babylon and Nineveh, and a deeply affecting pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala. She was so affected by the sadness and fervour she experienced around the shrine of Imam Hussein that she painted it for days, capturing the mosques' architecture, and the crowds of pilgrims. These two motifs are found in this sketch, in the background.

Occupying the centre of the paper plane is an important motif in Fahrlenissa Zeid's painterly trajectory, that led to her eventual abstract turn. The woman at the centre is found in many of her paintings of from the mid-1940s, titled Bedouins Selling Yoghurt and Bedouin Women. In fact, these women were not Bedouin, but rural ma'eediyyats, who sell fresh homemade gaimar, a clotted cream made from water buffalo milk, a popular breakfast staple in Iraq and the Near East. These women were a common sight at dawn in Iraq in the spring and summer seasons. They walked from homes to markets, piling high on their heads the cream's measuring and serving pots made from round metal containers or palm baskets.

The first sight of these strangely clad women to a Fahrlenissa Zeid who had lived only in Istanbul and Europe, would have a lasting influence. She would attribute her late 1940s turn towards abstraction first to her experience of transatlantic air travel in 1949, and to seeing the rapidly receding colourful landscape from above. Lesser known, is the second factor: The sight of advancing and vanishing "Bedouin" women:

"Another souvenir that played a role in my abstract evolution was during my first trip to the orient in Baghdad. I saw in the great expanses, the Bedouins 'fly' ... from my window, I saw from dawn the very distant road, coloured orange in the morning. This is how I saw six or seven silhouettes that came from the depth of the horizon, as if flying over the sands. I was petrified. They had on top of their heads a pyramid of pots of yoghurt, that looked from afar like very high chimneys ... and their veils floated in this gold [hue] that was ablaze. I ran to the window, but they had already passed.... This little event played a role in my abstract painting... While looking at the Bedouin women, I was seeing space, speed and movement."

This unique work bears the trace of the quintessential Fahrelnissa Zeid gesture: Her sharp rapid thrusting line that turns then returns, criss-crosses and swarms the pictorial plane. In the interstices of the lines are ellipses of light that create depth in the folds of an abaya, in the coloured glass of a mosque window, and in the curve of a cheekbone.

This drawing, is a visual record of Iraq, but it is also a study of colour, volume and motion. Always eschewing ethnographic details from her figurative works, Fahrelnissa Zeid juxtaposes here two striking scenes from her travels, and melds the pile of pots into a blue jet foregrounding the central figure. Thus, the central figure anticipates both her turn towards the abstract in the late 1940s, and the hieratic female figures of her 1980s Amman portraits.