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Lot Essay
Mahmoud Mokhtar has been regarded by art historians and critics alike as the founder of modern Egyptian sculpture, successfully uniting the art of his country’s pharaonic past with a contemporary appeal which captured the spirit of a newly independent Egypt.
Deeply connected to the land of his ancestors, Moukhtar was born in a small village near Mahalla in the Nile Delta where legend has it he as a child sculpted with the mud of the canal. His family later moved to Cairo where the emerging artist entered the city's School of Fine Arts and honed his skills creating work inspired by both peasant and city life. However, it was further training in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts beginning in 1911 which proved the most transformative to his art and his politics. It was here that Moukhtar was exposed to the European influences of Cubism and Futurism, and developed his increased sense of nationalism following his meeting with the Egyptian nationalist leader Saad Zaghloul in 1919 during the Paris Peace Conference. Following Egypt’s political emancipation in 1923 after almost 40 years of British occupation, the revolutionised Mukhtar unveiled his most renowned work Nahdat Misr (Egypt Awakening) a monumental group in pink granite depicting a sphinx rising and a peasant woman unveiling herself, which originally stood in Midan Bab Al Hadid (now at Cairo University Gate). The fellaha, or peasant woman, with her fact exposted soon became a leitmotif throughout the artist’s oeuvre, serving as the manifestation of the newly emerging Egypt - a symbol of the fertile Nile Delta integral to the nation’s past and of the modern women of the revolution who went unveiled in 1922 as a part of their anti-British demonstration so inherent to Egypt’s future.
In the present sculpture the fellaha appears once again, this time in the quotidian act of carrying a water jug, yet her studded headband and powerful stance enforced by Mokhtar’s clean, bold, and angular lines are reminiscent of the Ancient and noble priestesses that tred those shored before her. The original marble model was first presented at the ‘Exposition des Ouevres de Mouktar’ at Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 1930. It is believed that the model was then cast in bronze in several sizes within four editions between 1931 and 1948 by the foundry Susse Frères. The artist died of leukemia in 1934 and thus the timeline for these casts encompasses both lifetime and posthumous editions. The present example is of the same scale as the example in the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar, dated circa 1931 and noted as a fourth-edition cast. Another example of this scale was sold Sotheby’s, London, 23 October 2018, lot 54 (£75,000).
Deeply connected to the land of his ancestors, Moukhtar was born in a small village near Mahalla in the Nile Delta where legend has it he as a child sculpted with the mud of the canal. His family later moved to Cairo where the emerging artist entered the city's School of Fine Arts and honed his skills creating work inspired by both peasant and city life. However, it was further training in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts beginning in 1911 which proved the most transformative to his art and his politics. It was here that Moukhtar was exposed to the European influences of Cubism and Futurism, and developed his increased sense of nationalism following his meeting with the Egyptian nationalist leader Saad Zaghloul in 1919 during the Paris Peace Conference. Following Egypt’s political emancipation in 1923 after almost 40 years of British occupation, the revolutionised Mukhtar unveiled his most renowned work Nahdat Misr (Egypt Awakening) a monumental group in pink granite depicting a sphinx rising and a peasant woman unveiling herself, which originally stood in Midan Bab Al Hadid (now at Cairo University Gate). The fellaha, or peasant woman, with her fact exposted soon became a leitmotif throughout the artist’s oeuvre, serving as the manifestation of the newly emerging Egypt - a symbol of the fertile Nile Delta integral to the nation’s past and of the modern women of the revolution who went unveiled in 1922 as a part of their anti-British demonstration so inherent to Egypt’s future.
In the present sculpture the fellaha appears once again, this time in the quotidian act of carrying a water jug, yet her studded headband and powerful stance enforced by Mokhtar’s clean, bold, and angular lines are reminiscent of the Ancient and noble priestesses that tred those shored before her. The original marble model was first presented at the ‘Exposition des Ouevres de Mouktar’ at Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 1930. It is believed that the model was then cast in bronze in several sizes within four editions between 1931 and 1948 by the foundry Susse Frères. The artist died of leukemia in 1934 and thus the timeline for these casts encompasses both lifetime and posthumous editions. The present example is of the same scale as the example in the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar, dated circa 1931 and noted as a fourth-edition cast. Another example of this scale was sold Sotheby’s, London, 23 October 2018, lot 54 (£75,000).