The Mahmoud Said painting, Bergère à Alamein, will be the top lot in Christie’s Modern and Contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish Art Auction on Tuesday.
But before you rush off with your chequebook to Emirates Towers, you ought to know this piece is expected to sell for between $400,000 and $600,000.
It was originally in the private collection of Tharawat Okasha, the Egyptian minister of culture from 1959 to 1964.
Said’s work sells well in the Middle East, according to Christie’s, which has high hopes for the sale. This work is just one of three on sale from the artist. The painting focuses on a recurring feature of Said’s work, Egyptian peasants, or “fellaha”; this lot depicts a shepherdess on a hill and is one of a series of works that the artist painted featuring fellahas.
The portrait features the distinctive, startling, light and terrain of El Alamein, the Mediterranean town in the Matrouh governorate of Egypt. Using a luminous yellow pigment soaked with sunlight for the ground, heightened by an immaculate white for the hills in the background, Said manages to reflect the signature colours of El-Alamein.
Said (1897-1964) lived the majority of his life in Alexandria, Egypt, where he served as a judge in addition to his work as a painter.
He is one of Egypt’s most celebrated artists, beginning the modern art movement his country. He focused primarily on genre paintings, landscapes and portraits, many of which depicted themes of traditional Egyptian culture and his hometown of Alexandria.
His father, Muhammad Said Pasha, was once the prime minister of Egypt and Queen Farida of Egypt was his niece. In 2012, his Pecheurs a Rashid (Rosette) made $818,500 at Christie’s Dubai. Said’s auction record stands at $2.4million – set for La Chadoufs at Christie’s in 2010. It had been estimated to fetch between $150,000 and $200,000. The painting depicts a veiled woman carrying water and two men and a white, long-eared donkey drawing water from a well. It was formerly owned by Mohammed Said Farsi, a Saudi art lover and former mayor of Jeddah.
At last year’s Christie’s auction of high-end regional art, a large canvas abstract work by the Turkish-Jordanian artist Fahr El Nissa Zeid sold for $2.7m.
Q&A
Hala Khayat, head of the sale of Modern and Contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish Art at Christie’s, reveals more about Christie’s auction next week:
When should I make sure I don’t scratch my nose in the auction?
The three paintings by the father of modern Egyptian art, Mahmoud Said (1897-1964), are led by the rare Bergère à Alamein which was originally in the private collection of Tharawat Okasha, Egypt's minister of culture from 1959 to 1964. It is expected to sell for $400,000 to $600,000. The other two works include one of Said's most spectacular Lebanese landscapes Après la pluie au Liban from the same collection ($200,000 to $250,000) and a jewel-like panel from another private collection, Le Chat Blanc (esquisse), which is a preparatory oil sketch for one of Said's most best-known large compositions of the same title. The estimate is $80,000 to $120,000.
Anything else I should keep my hands in my pockets for?
Christie’s Dubai will be offering 10 works by the leading Lebanese modernist Shafic Abboud (1926-2004) from his Beirut collection of Viviane & Robert Debbas. The works are mostly large compositions in Abboud’s distinctive, abstract hand. Each work is a study in his 60-year experiment in the search for the essence of light through colour. “I only stop when both colour and light match. I cannot escape from colour, it is my fate and nature – my eyes have been dazzled forever,” said Abboud in 1982.
How much is the collection expected to realise?
About $2 million.
ascott@thenational.ae
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