.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Mahmoud Saïd often fled the heavy Egyptian summer heat by spending some time in Lebanon, whether it was in the capital or in its picturesque surroundings. In 1954, Saïd recorded one of his trips to Lebanon through three monumental paintings, one depicting the view of the mountain from Dhour El Shoueir on the outskirts of Beirut (Private Collection), another representing the Bekaa Valley (sold at Christie's Dubai, April 2010 - price realised: $398,500) and the third is the present exquisite work reflecting the busy sea harbour of the capital. By 1954, Saïd was a well-established painter who excelled in combining his own style with the theories of Italian and Northern Renaissance fused with early 20th century art trends, as exemplified in Port de Beyrout..
The complex play on the composition's diagonals in Port de Beyrouth reveals Saïd's thorough assimilation of classical Renaissance perspective and structure, which he would have observed in museums' masterpieces whilst travelling through Europe. The snapshot view of the harbour, with the buildings trimmed in the foreground by the canvas edges, as well as the diagonals of the composition, contribute to making the peaceful port scene livelier. This is further emphasised by the warm and dramatic light emanating from the buildings and houses, which contrasts with the dark stormy clouds in the sky hovering above and threatening the mountains in the background. As in the Dhour El Shoueir painting, Mahmoud Saïd focuses on the complimentary colours orange and green and how they respond to each other, an artistic theory which had been extensively explored in various ways by the Fauve artists such as Henri Matisse and the Pointillist artists such as Georges Seurat at the beginning of the 20th century. Furthermore, Saïd purposely omits any superfluous detail and simplifies the architecture and natural elements of his composition as much as possible almost reaching a certain cubist abstraction.
Port de Beyrouth is also an exceptional example in which Mahmoud Saïd not only incorporates his knowledge of aerial perspective but also defies and experiments it. Aerial perspective was praised by 16th and 17th Century Dutch and Flemish painters and allowed those artists to achieve an effect of depth through the use of layers of colours, displayed in a specific order, from the most saturated tones in the foreground to the less intense hues in the background. Although we find again the traditional brown, blue-green, white and orange pigments through the composition of Port de Beyrouth, the colour planes are superimposed differently than the norm. In the Dhour El Shoueir work, Saïd rigorously follows aerial perspective using the earthy burnt-umber pigments in the foreground, followed by a luminous green in the middle finally leading on to the atmospheric grey, white and light blue tones in the background. However in Port de Beyrouth, the layer of warm colour tones comprising of the sun-lit constructions with orange roofs are trapped between two planes of intense blue-green hues in order to make the harbour stand out, yet contradicting the principles of aerial perspective. The harmonious balance of all the pigments seems to have been at the core of Saïd's concept when he decided to paint Beirut's harbour, as he had first executed an Impressionist-like preparatory oil sketch for Port de Beyrouth with broad brushstrokes (illustrated in colour in E. Dawastashy's book on Mahmoud Saïd, incorrectly listed as no. 256, p. 275) through which the shapes as well as the composition are rendered almost solely through the juxtaposition of rich colour tones.
The complex play on the composition's diagonals in Port de Beyrouth reveals Saïd's thorough assimilation of classical Renaissance perspective and structure, which he would have observed in museums' masterpieces whilst travelling through Europe. The snapshot view of the harbour, with the buildings trimmed in the foreground by the canvas edges, as well as the diagonals of the composition, contribute to making the peaceful port scene livelier. This is further emphasised by the warm and dramatic light emanating from the buildings and houses, which contrasts with the dark stormy clouds in the sky hovering above and threatening the mountains in the background. As in the Dhour El Shoueir painting, Mahmoud Saïd focuses on the complimentary colours orange and green and how they respond to each other, an artistic theory which had been extensively explored in various ways by the Fauve artists such as Henri Matisse and the Pointillist artists such as Georges Seurat at the beginning of the 20th century. Furthermore, Saïd purposely omits any superfluous detail and simplifies the architecture and natural elements of his composition as much as possible almost reaching a certain cubist abstraction.
Port de Beyrouth is also an exceptional example in which Mahmoud Saïd not only incorporates his knowledge of aerial perspective but also defies and experiments it. Aerial perspective was praised by 16th and 17th Century Dutch and Flemish painters and allowed those artists to achieve an effect of depth through the use of layers of colours, displayed in a specific order, from the most saturated tones in the foreground to the less intense hues in the background. Although we find again the traditional brown, blue-green, white and orange pigments through the composition of Port de Beyrouth, the colour planes are superimposed differently than the norm. In the Dhour El Shoueir work, Saïd rigorously follows aerial perspective using the earthy burnt-umber pigments in the foreground, followed by a luminous green in the middle finally leading on to the atmospheric grey, white and light blue tones in the background. However in Port de Beyrouth, the layer of warm colour tones comprising of the sun-lit constructions with orange roofs are trapped between two planes of intense blue-green hues in order to make the harbour stand out, yet contradicting the principles of aerial perspective. The harmonious balance of all the pigments seems to have been at the core of Saïd's concept when he decided to paint Beirut's harbour, as he had first executed an Impressionist-like preparatory oil sketch for Port de Beyrouth with broad brushstrokes (illustrated in colour in E. Dawastashy's book on Mahmoud Saïd, incorrectly listed as no. 256, p. 275) through which the shapes as well as the composition are rendered almost solely through the juxtaposition of rich colour tones.