The Prayer at Daybreak

Otto Pilny began his artistic education in Prague and lived for a time in Vienna before ultimately settling in Zurich. He traveled to Egypt twice, the first visit in 1889 and again in 1892, and was so taken with the landscape, people and their mores that he spent the rest of his career painting Orientalist works. A Prayer in the Desert is a particularly virtuoso representation of one of the artist's favorite themes. Executed in a rich palette and bathed in clear bright light, this painting depicts a unique vision of the solemnity and unifying force of the call to prayer.