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Lot Essay
Ranked in the top echelon of Orientalist painters of the second half of the 19th century, Rudolf Ernst was a superb craftsman who used his exotic subject matter primarily as a vehicle through which he expressed his technical mastery of transferring texture and color to a painted surface. Like his compatriot Ludwig Deutsch, Ernst developed a mastery of plasticity and form which was best expressed through his depictions of artifacts. His concern was not complete ethnographic accuracy, for sometimes he would juxtapose objects from different cultures in the same composition, but more to dazzle his wealthy patrons with paintings that had almost a three-dimensional quality.
These qualities made Ernst’s works extremely sought-after in his day. He was a popular and frequent exhibitor at the Paris Salon and was rated particularly highly by American clients who sought out his large scale works to decorate their vast houses. The sense of opulence celebrated in so many of Ernst’s paintings was well-suited to the surroundings in which they would eventually hang.
Ernst was intimately familiar with the cultures he depicted in his paintings. The artist visited Morocco, Turkey and the Moorish palaces of Spain. He used these trips to exotic lands to amass a vast array of different objects for his personal collection, which he would reassemble in his studio and use as backdrops and props for his paintings. He would also supplement the source material of his collection with information provided by an extensive personal collection of photographs and illustrated books.
In addition to his exquisite images of daily life in the Middle East, Ernst also produced striking images of tigers; tigers being hunted, tigers on the prowl or tigers as pets of the ruling class. The famed Orientalist artist Jean-Léon Gérôme significantly influenced Ernst, and the present lot is similar in theme to The Grief of the Pasha (La douleur du Pacha), 1882 (fig. 1). Although the subject matter is taken from his master, Ernst uses the composition to showcase his virtuoso brushwork and command of capturing the different textures and nuances of a luxurious Oriental interior. In Honoring the Tiger, Ernst has deviated from the Islamic interior of Gérôme’s work and has instead placed the tiger and his mourner in a fanciful yet luxurious interior which incorporates Islamic, Buddhist, Hindi and Jain elements into one architectural background.
(fig. 1): Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Grief of the Pasha, 1882. Joslyn Art Musem, Omaha.
These qualities made Ernst’s works extremely sought-after in his day. He was a popular and frequent exhibitor at the Paris Salon and was rated particularly highly by American clients who sought out his large scale works to decorate their vast houses. The sense of opulence celebrated in so many of Ernst’s paintings was well-suited to the surroundings in which they would eventually hang.
Ernst was intimately familiar with the cultures he depicted in his paintings. The artist visited Morocco, Turkey and the Moorish palaces of Spain. He used these trips to exotic lands to amass a vast array of different objects for his personal collection, which he would reassemble in his studio and use as backdrops and props for his paintings. He would also supplement the source material of his collection with information provided by an extensive personal collection of photographs and illustrated books.
In addition to his exquisite images of daily life in the Middle East, Ernst also produced striking images of tigers; tigers being hunted, tigers on the prowl or tigers as pets of the ruling class. The famed Orientalist artist Jean-Léon Gérôme significantly influenced Ernst, and the present lot is similar in theme to The Grief of the Pasha (La douleur du Pacha), 1882 (fig. 1). Although the subject matter is taken from his master, Ernst uses the composition to showcase his virtuoso brushwork and command of capturing the different textures and nuances of a luxurious Oriental interior. In Honoring the Tiger, Ernst has deviated from the Islamic interior of Gérôme’s work and has instead placed the tiger and his mourner in a fanciful yet luxurious interior which incorporates Islamic, Buddhist, Hindi and Jain elements into one architectural background.
(fig. 1): Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Grief of the Pasha, 1882. Joslyn Art Musem, Omaha.