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Lot Essay
A true master of landscape painting, Mahmoud Saïd not only depicted scenes from his beloved Egypt, from Alexandria to the banks of the Nile in Luxor, Aswan and Mansourah, but also painted landscape views of places he visited on holiday. One of his favourite escapes from the suffocating Egyptian summer heat was Lebanon, especially in the 1950s. The first three Lebanese landscapes painted by the Alexandrian master date back to 1951 and represent houses in the village of Aïtanit, in the West Bekaa region, where Saïd appears to have visited his close friend Dr. Joseph Elkayem. Between 1952 and 1959, he produced more than twenty additional paintings depicting Lebanon, all of different formats, compositions and infused with their own unique light each time. Coucher de soleil vers le Saanin, Liban is a beautiful example of Saïd's Lebanese production, in terms of its unconventional composition, its carefully chosen palette and the fiery colours emanating from the sunset light. It further exemplifies Mahmoud Saïd's colouristic skills and how he perceived nature as a juxtaposition of colours rather than abstract lines.
Despite its execution and format, Coucher de soleil vers le Saanin, Liban does not seem to be a preparatory oil sketch known as ‘modello’, as a larger version of the present lot is not known until today. Yet most probably it was painted on the spot genuinely translating Saïd’s perception of his subject and the emotions he felt in front of it. The complex intertwinement of diagonals building up the composition and its dramatic viewpoint offer a very lively depiction of Mount Saanin, located in Mount Lebanon, although the warm colours, the dense composition and the snapshot view of the landscape that crops almost the entire skyline seem to freeze the landscape at a very precise moment at the end of the day.
Playing with complimentary colours by using a wide range of vibrant orange tones answering to some rich green hues, Saïd defies traditional aerial perspective advocated by Europe’s Old Masters by deconstructing it with the large fiery orange hill in the foreground, the blueish white mountains at the centre and he brings together the composition’s three dominant colour tones – orange, green, blueish white – in the background. The scene’s unconventional perspective is heightened by Saïd’s signature cobalt blue pigment used for the focal point placed at the tip of one of the white mountains. He emphasizes the lush vegetation of Lebanon’s iconic pine trees, by stylising them in the foreground, by aligning them to stress the composition’s diagonals, and by letting the sunset light brush their leaves.
The other half of the painting is more abstract in terms of its areas of predominantly blueish white pigment ornamented with vibrant orange and white fecks, suggesting the presence of remote mountain villages. This aesthetic approach reveals Saïd's awareness of 20th century Western Modern art, yet the jewel like warm light enveloping the landscape is undeniably the Alexandrian's signature. Imbued with several elements inspired from various styles throughout the history of art, Mahmoud Saïd's Coucher de soleil vers le Saanin, Liban epitomizes how he mastered them in a very innovative and unique way, always adding his own Egyptian personal touch to ensure his independence and detachment from his ancestors and fellow Western artists.
Despite its execution and format, Coucher de soleil vers le Saanin, Liban does not seem to be a preparatory oil sketch known as ‘modello’, as a larger version of the present lot is not known until today. Yet most probably it was painted on the spot genuinely translating Saïd’s perception of his subject and the emotions he felt in front of it. The complex intertwinement of diagonals building up the composition and its dramatic viewpoint offer a very lively depiction of Mount Saanin, located in Mount Lebanon, although the warm colours, the dense composition and the snapshot view of the landscape that crops almost the entire skyline seem to freeze the landscape at a very precise moment at the end of the day.
Playing with complimentary colours by using a wide range of vibrant orange tones answering to some rich green hues, Saïd defies traditional aerial perspective advocated by Europe’s Old Masters by deconstructing it with the large fiery orange hill in the foreground, the blueish white mountains at the centre and he brings together the composition’s three dominant colour tones – orange, green, blueish white – in the background. The scene’s unconventional perspective is heightened by Saïd’s signature cobalt blue pigment used for the focal point placed at the tip of one of the white mountains. He emphasizes the lush vegetation of Lebanon’s iconic pine trees, by stylising them in the foreground, by aligning them to stress the composition’s diagonals, and by letting the sunset light brush their leaves.
The other half of the painting is more abstract in terms of its areas of predominantly blueish white pigment ornamented with vibrant orange and white fecks, suggesting the presence of remote mountain villages. This aesthetic approach reveals Saïd's awareness of 20th century Western Modern art, yet the jewel like warm light enveloping the landscape is undeniably the Alexandrian's signature. Imbued with several elements inspired from various styles throughout the history of art, Mahmoud Saïd's Coucher de soleil vers le Saanin, Liban epitomizes how he mastered them in a very innovative and unique way, always adding his own Egyptian personal touch to ensure his independence and detachment from his ancestors and fellow Western artists.