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Lot Essay
Painted in 1952, Portrait de Princesse Fadia depicts the young Princess Fadia (1943–2002), the youngest of King Farouk I and Queen Farida of Egypt’s three daughters. This painting occupies a distinctive place within Mahmoud Saïd’s portraiture through the personal immediacy and liveliness of its subject, its unique provenance and its pivotal historical date of execution. The work originates from the former collection of Her Majesty Queen Farida and was painted by Saïd, Farida’s maternal uncle and therefore Fadia’s great-uncle. The relationship between artist and sitter was thus profoundly personal: Saïd was not an artist brought in to record the royal family, but a close member of it. This intimacy lends the portrait an unusual warmth, whilst the portrait also carries the representational weight of a royal image. Through the depiction of the young princess in her delicate pink dress, framed by a large white bow and flowers, Saïd presents the dynasty through an image of grace, refinement and youthful modernity. The formality of her dress and carefully composed appearance establishes her social and dynastic position, while the warmth of the setting and softness of her expression introduce a more personal dimension. Her serene expression and subtle smile further convey the unaffected innocence of childhood, distinguishing the painting from the more formal photographic image on which it was based. The portrait thus balances the ceremonial function of royal representation with the tenderness of a family likeness.
"In Alban’s photograph, HRH Princess Fadia is presented frontally and has all the accomplished elegance of great Court photography. The Princess is charming, beautifully dressed, obviously well-mannered, poised and, unmistakably, still a child. Mahmoud Saïd takes exactly these same elements and changes their meaning. He even reverses the directional structure of the image and expands her presence on the canvas, giving her far greater physical authority. What we have are two artists creating two remarkable works at almost the same time, with the same model, but using completely different methodologies and approaches." — M. Shamil-Orloff
The painting is particularly revealing when considered alongside the photograph by Alban, the official photographer of the Royal Court, on which it was based. The photograph presents Fadia in a more formal and frontal pose, with its stiffness and strong contrasts characteristic of a studio portrait: her shoulders are squared towards the camera and her elaborate dress and oversized bow are clearly defined. Saïd retains the essential arrangement—the dark curls, voluminous skirt and prominent bow—but transforms the photographic formality into a more intimate painted presence. Fadia leans gently against the furniture at the lower left, her weight more naturally settled, while Saïd’s feathery brushstrokes dissolve the harder edges visible in the photograph and his distinctive handling of light bathes the princess in a gentle, diffused glow. The pale pink of her organza and lace dress seems to absorb this light, conveying the lightness of the material and giving the figure a luminous warmth that extends into the surrounding space. The pale flowers behind her become an atmospheric element, softly framing the sitter and echoing the delicacy of her dress. Where the photograph records the appearance of a royal child, Saïd transforms that likeness into a portrait of personality and presence. It is this quality of unaffected serenity that makes the painting particularly poignant in retrospect: only months after it was made, Fadia’s life would be profoundly altered by the dissolution of the world in which she had grown up.
The familial history surrounding the painting deepens its significance. Saïd was born in Alexandria in 1897 into one of Egypt’s prominent aristocratic families, the son of Mohamed Said Pasha, who served twice as Prime Minister of Egypt. His niece, Safinaz Zulficar, became Queen Farida upon her marriage to King Farouk in 1938. Saïd had already painted Farida as a child in 1927, today housed in the Mahmoud Saïd Museum, Alexandria, making Portrait de Princesse Fadia the second generation of the family to be captured by his hand. The work therefore belongs to a sustained artistic relationship within the family rather than to a conventional exercise in court portraiture. Saïd’s relationship with Fadia extended beyond the portrait itself: in the same year, he painted her beloved black pony, Black Beauty, dedicating the work to the young princess. The paintings were among the few possessions Fadia took with her when she left Egypt for exile, giving them an especially poignant significance as tangible links to her childhood and home. This distinction is central to Saïd’s approach to portraiture. Across his depictions of family, friends, colleagues and members of Alexandria’s society, he combined the conventions of European portrait painting with a highly sensitive attention to the individuality and psychology of his sitters.
“It was a traumatizing time for my mother, aged just nine years old, and her family – they were given less than 24 hours to leave their beloved country, their friends and family. As my grandfather and grandmother were already divorced since 1948, my mother left with her father, her two sisters and baby King Ahmed Fouad II for Italy. My grandmother was torn apart by this separation from her three daughters, as she was forced to remain under supervision in Cairo. It was not until at least five years later that my grandmother saw her children again, and then most likely in 1964, after she had moved to Beirut and on the occasion of the wedding of the ruling King of Greece, Constantine, on 18 September 1964 in Athens, and most certainly in 1965, as Queen Farida attended my parents’ wedding on 17 February 1965 at the Kensington Registrar Office in London and the family reunited again a month later for my grandfather’s funeral in Rome on 22 March 1965. The portrait of my mother as a child that Mahmoud Saïd painted is extraordinary not only because of its technique but also because it was painted probably in January or February 1952, during the last few months the royal family spent in Egypt before being exiled forever.” — M. Shamil-Orloff (V. D. Hess and H. Rashwan, Mahmoud Saïd Catalogue raisonné, Volume 2. Drawings, Milan, 2016).
The date of Portrait de Princesse Fadia gives the painting an additional historical resonance. Executed in the final months of the Egyptian monarchy, it belongs to a moment in which the world represented by the portrait was already approaching a profound rupture. On 23 July 1952, the Free Officers movement overthrew King Farouk, who abdicated three days later in favour of his infant son, Ahmed Fuad II; the monarchy was formally abolished in 1953. Queen Farida had divorced King Farouk in 1948, when Princess Fadia was just four years old. It was agreed that King Farouk would take care of the two eldest daughters, Princess Ferial and Princess Fawzia, whilst Princess Fadia stayed with her mother, creating a particularly strong bond between mother and daughter. Following the 1952 revolution, however, Fadia left Egypt with her father and sisters for Europe, spending her early years in Italy before attending boarding school in Switzerland. There she developed a passion for painting and horses, as well as a remarkable aptitude for languages, becoming fluent in Arabic, French, English, Italian and Spanish. The separation from her mother was only temporary in geographical terms, but would become a defining element of the family’s post-monarchical history.
Fadia’s later life remained closely connected to the interests she had developed in childhood. She married Pierre-Saïd Alexeievich Orloff, a Swiss geologist from the Russian émigré aristocracy, in London in 1965. Together they had two sons, Michel-Shamil and Alexandre-Ali. Fadia also shared her husband’s passion for horses, spending much of her married life training, breeding and riding racehorses, while her linguistic abilities led her to work as a translator for Swiss tourism. Her relationship with painting likewise endured. When she was reunited with Queen Farida, who travelled regularly to Switzerland after leaving Egypt, mother and daughter shared an artistic interest that had begun within the family: Saïd had encouraged Farida’s own engagement with painting, and this passion was subsequently taken up by Fadia. In this sense, Portrait de Princesse Fadia forms part of an artistic inheritance that passed between three generations of the family, from Saïd to Farida and ultimately to Fadia.
“By 1952, Mahmoud Saïd was fifty-five years old. Five years earlier, he had abandoned his
judicial career to devote himself completely to his passion. By then he had spent decades absorbing European artistic traditions and transforming them into his own independent Egyptian modernism. As such, this portrait belongs to the period of his full artistic maturity, when he had complete command of portraiture as a genre. Compared to Alban’s photograph, Mahmoud Saïd strengthens the eyebrows and the eyes. He simplifies the nose, compresses the mouth and warms the skin. The result is extremely powerful: less anatomical information produces greater psychological intensity, from which emanates a profound personality. This is truly Mahmoud Saïd’s unparalleled talent, in that he manages to express something of the Egyptian soul through the portrait of a little Royal Princess. For that reason, this portrait is, I believe, one of the strongest examples of that artistic legacy.”— M. Shamil-Orloff
Portraiture occupied a central and sustained position within Mahmoud Saïd’s oeuvre. Alongside his celebrated depictions of Egyptian landscapes, fishermen, peasants and urban life, he produced numerous portraits of women and members of his own social milieu throughout his career. His particular achievement lay in adapting the techniques and conventions of European painting to the representation of Egyptian subjects, contributing decisively to the emergence of a distinctly modern Egyptian visual language. His portraits encompass a remarkable social range, from aristocratic and cosmopolitan sitters to women encountered in everyday Egyptian life, yet they share an attentiveness to individual presence that distinguishes them from straightforward records of appearance.
Within this history, Portrait de Princesse Fadia is especially personal. It combines the familial character of a private portrait with the ceremonial associations of royal representation, while its provenance preserves a direct connection between the artist, his sitter and the family for whom the work was created. Its significance is further deepened by the life that unfolded beyond the moment captured on canvas. When Queen Farida died in 1988, Fadia returned to Egypt for her mother’s funeral and described her experience as a “feeling of being someone who returned home after a long time.” The sentiment is especially poignant given that she had left the country as a child and spent most of her life abroad. Fadia died in Switzerland in December 2002, and her remains were subsequently returned to Egypt, where she was laid to rest at Al-Rifa’i Mosque in Cairo alongside her father and other members of the Egyptian royal family. Painted by a great-uncle who had already portrayed her mother as a child, the picture therefore captures not only a moment of familial continuity but the last months of a world that was about to disappear. In its delicate palette, relaxed pose and attentive rendering of a young sitter, Saïd transforms a private family image into a quietly poignant record of childhood, belonging and a vanished Egypt.
"In Alban’s photograph, HRH Princess Fadia is presented frontally and has all the accomplished elegance of great Court photography. The Princess is charming, beautifully dressed, obviously well-mannered, poised and, unmistakably, still a child. Mahmoud Saïd takes exactly these same elements and changes their meaning. He even reverses the directional structure of the image and expands her presence on the canvas, giving her far greater physical authority. What we have are two artists creating two remarkable works at almost the same time, with the same model, but using completely different methodologies and approaches." — M. Shamil-Orloff
The painting is particularly revealing when considered alongside the photograph by Alban, the official photographer of the Royal Court, on which it was based. The photograph presents Fadia in a more formal and frontal pose, with its stiffness and strong contrasts characteristic of a studio portrait: her shoulders are squared towards the camera and her elaborate dress and oversized bow are clearly defined. Saïd retains the essential arrangement—the dark curls, voluminous skirt and prominent bow—but transforms the photographic formality into a more intimate painted presence. Fadia leans gently against the furniture at the lower left, her weight more naturally settled, while Saïd’s feathery brushstrokes dissolve the harder edges visible in the photograph and his distinctive handling of light bathes the princess in a gentle, diffused glow. The pale pink of her organza and lace dress seems to absorb this light, conveying the lightness of the material and giving the figure a luminous warmth that extends into the surrounding space. The pale flowers behind her become an atmospheric element, softly framing the sitter and echoing the delicacy of her dress. Where the photograph records the appearance of a royal child, Saïd transforms that likeness into a portrait of personality and presence. It is this quality of unaffected serenity that makes the painting particularly poignant in retrospect: only months after it was made, Fadia’s life would be profoundly altered by the dissolution of the world in which she had grown up.
The familial history surrounding the painting deepens its significance. Saïd was born in Alexandria in 1897 into one of Egypt’s prominent aristocratic families, the son of Mohamed Said Pasha, who served twice as Prime Minister of Egypt. His niece, Safinaz Zulficar, became Queen Farida upon her marriage to King Farouk in 1938. Saïd had already painted Farida as a child in 1927, today housed in the Mahmoud Saïd Museum, Alexandria, making Portrait de Princesse Fadia the second generation of the family to be captured by his hand. The work therefore belongs to a sustained artistic relationship within the family rather than to a conventional exercise in court portraiture. Saïd’s relationship with Fadia extended beyond the portrait itself: in the same year, he painted her beloved black pony, Black Beauty, dedicating the work to the young princess. The paintings were among the few possessions Fadia took with her when she left Egypt for exile, giving them an especially poignant significance as tangible links to her childhood and home. This distinction is central to Saïd’s approach to portraiture. Across his depictions of family, friends, colleagues and members of Alexandria’s society, he combined the conventions of European portrait painting with a highly sensitive attention to the individuality and psychology of his sitters.
“It was a traumatizing time for my mother, aged just nine years old, and her family – they were given less than 24 hours to leave their beloved country, their friends and family. As my grandfather and grandmother were already divorced since 1948, my mother left with her father, her two sisters and baby King Ahmed Fouad II for Italy. My grandmother was torn apart by this separation from her three daughters, as she was forced to remain under supervision in Cairo. It was not until at least five years later that my grandmother saw her children again, and then most likely in 1964, after she had moved to Beirut and on the occasion of the wedding of the ruling King of Greece, Constantine, on 18 September 1964 in Athens, and most certainly in 1965, as Queen Farida attended my parents’ wedding on 17 February 1965 at the Kensington Registrar Office in London and the family reunited again a month later for my grandfather’s funeral in Rome on 22 March 1965. The portrait of my mother as a child that Mahmoud Saïd painted is extraordinary not only because of its technique but also because it was painted probably in January or February 1952, during the last few months the royal family spent in Egypt before being exiled forever.” — M. Shamil-Orloff (V. D. Hess and H. Rashwan, Mahmoud Saïd Catalogue raisonné, Volume 2. Drawings, Milan, 2016).
The date of Portrait de Princesse Fadia gives the painting an additional historical resonance. Executed in the final months of the Egyptian monarchy, it belongs to a moment in which the world represented by the portrait was already approaching a profound rupture. On 23 July 1952, the Free Officers movement overthrew King Farouk, who abdicated three days later in favour of his infant son, Ahmed Fuad II; the monarchy was formally abolished in 1953. Queen Farida had divorced King Farouk in 1948, when Princess Fadia was just four years old. It was agreed that King Farouk would take care of the two eldest daughters, Princess Ferial and Princess Fawzia, whilst Princess Fadia stayed with her mother, creating a particularly strong bond between mother and daughter. Following the 1952 revolution, however, Fadia left Egypt with her father and sisters for Europe, spending her early years in Italy before attending boarding school in Switzerland. There she developed a passion for painting and horses, as well as a remarkable aptitude for languages, becoming fluent in Arabic, French, English, Italian and Spanish. The separation from her mother was only temporary in geographical terms, but would become a defining element of the family’s post-monarchical history.
Fadia’s later life remained closely connected to the interests she had developed in childhood. She married Pierre-Saïd Alexeievich Orloff, a Swiss geologist from the Russian émigré aristocracy, in London in 1965. Together they had two sons, Michel-Shamil and Alexandre-Ali. Fadia also shared her husband’s passion for horses, spending much of her married life training, breeding and riding racehorses, while her linguistic abilities led her to work as a translator for Swiss tourism. Her relationship with painting likewise endured. When she was reunited with Queen Farida, who travelled regularly to Switzerland after leaving Egypt, mother and daughter shared an artistic interest that had begun within the family: Saïd had encouraged Farida’s own engagement with painting, and this passion was subsequently taken up by Fadia. In this sense, Portrait de Princesse Fadia forms part of an artistic inheritance that passed between three generations of the family, from Saïd to Farida and ultimately to Fadia.
“By 1952, Mahmoud Saïd was fifty-five years old. Five years earlier, he had abandoned his
judicial career to devote himself completely to his passion. By then he had spent decades absorbing European artistic traditions and transforming them into his own independent Egyptian modernism. As such, this portrait belongs to the period of his full artistic maturity, when he had complete command of portraiture as a genre. Compared to Alban’s photograph, Mahmoud Saïd strengthens the eyebrows and the eyes. He simplifies the nose, compresses the mouth and warms the skin. The result is extremely powerful: less anatomical information produces greater psychological intensity, from which emanates a profound personality. This is truly Mahmoud Saïd’s unparalleled talent, in that he manages to express something of the Egyptian soul through the portrait of a little Royal Princess. For that reason, this portrait is, I believe, one of the strongest examples of that artistic legacy.”— M. Shamil-Orloff
Portraiture occupied a central and sustained position within Mahmoud Saïd’s oeuvre. Alongside his celebrated depictions of Egyptian landscapes, fishermen, peasants and urban life, he produced numerous portraits of women and members of his own social milieu throughout his career. His particular achievement lay in adapting the techniques and conventions of European painting to the representation of Egyptian subjects, contributing decisively to the emergence of a distinctly modern Egyptian visual language. His portraits encompass a remarkable social range, from aristocratic and cosmopolitan sitters to women encountered in everyday Egyptian life, yet they share an attentiveness to individual presence that distinguishes them from straightforward records of appearance.
Within this history, Portrait de Princesse Fadia is especially personal. It combines the familial character of a private portrait with the ceremonial associations of royal representation, while its provenance preserves a direct connection between the artist, his sitter and the family for whom the work was created. Its significance is further deepened by the life that unfolded beyond the moment captured on canvas. When Queen Farida died in 1988, Fadia returned to Egypt for her mother’s funeral and described her experience as a “feeling of being someone who returned home after a long time.” The sentiment is especially poignant given that she had left the country as a child and spent most of her life abroad. Fadia died in Switzerland in December 2002, and her remains were subsequently returned to Egypt, where she was laid to rest at Al-Rifa’i Mosque in Cairo alongside her father and other members of the Egyptian royal family. Painted by a great-uncle who had already portrayed her mother as a child, the picture therefore captures not only a moment of familial continuity but the last months of a world that was about to disappear. In its delicate palette, relaxed pose and attentive rendering of a young sitter, Saïd transforms a private family image into a quietly poignant record of childhood, belonging and a vanished Egypt.