Portrait of Princess Fadia by Mahmoud Saïd, Egypt’s greatest modern painter — and the sitter’s great-uncle

Alexandria is a city of ‘five races, five languages, a dozen creeds’, as Lawrence Durrell wrote in his novel Justine; yet that polyglot mix of eastern Mediterranean and urban Egypt all but vanished with the revolution of 1952. Ancient buildings were torn down and street names changed to mark the coming of a proud new nationalist future. Where once the narrow alleyways and brick-dust pavements resonated with the clang of trams shuddering in their metal rails, another city now stood in its place.

The Egyptian monarchy departed alongside that old world. When the Free Officers movement, led by General Mohamed Naguib and Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, staged a coup d’état, King Farouk and his family were given 24 hours to leave. Their last look at Alexandria was from the royal yacht, as they sailed out into the Mediterranean and into exile in Capri.

On board were Farouk, his second wife Queen Narriman, their infant son, and three daughters from his previous marriage. For nine-year-old Fadia, the king’s youngest daughter, the expulsion was disorientating. Her mother, the former Queen Farida, had been denied permission to leave Cairo by the Revolutionary Command Council. She would not see her for at least five years. ‘My grandmother was torn apart by the separation from her daughters,’ says Fadia’s son, Michel-Shamil Orloff.

In Queen Farida’s apartment in Cairo hung a portrait of Princess Fadia. ‘It was one of the few belongings she was allowed to keep after the military confiscated her property,’ says Orloff. Painted by the artist Mahmoud Saïd, it depicts the little princess seated on a table in a pink organza dress, with a large bow in her hair. ‘It was made at a critical juncture in Egypt’s history, just months before the revolution,’ he says. ‘It represents the old world before this profound rupture happened.’

On 1 November 2026, the portrait of Princess Fadia from Her Majesty Queen Farida’s collection will be offered in MAWASIM: 20 Years of Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art. This exceptional work is the last depiction of a member of the Egyptian royal family to be painted before the abdication. The sale, at The Abu Dhabi EDITION hotel, marks two decades since Christie’s first auction took place in the UAE.

The painting is similar to a photograph of Fadia taken by the court photographer Aram Alban. The difference, says Orloff, is that ‘Alban records a princess, while Mahmoud Saïd constructs a presence.’ It is a strangely enigmatic portrait: the young princess’s light-brown eyes seem aglow with an inner force. In Alban’s photograph, the white dress is light and delicate, and Princess Fadia appears younger, almost fragile, whereas in Saïd’s painting the pink dress has an emphatic solidity. ‘Somehow he transforms this little girl into a monumental figure without ever making her cease to be a child,’ says Orloff. ‘There is this extraordinary balance between a ceremonial royal portrait and something much more intimate and psychological. He knew his niece very well, and she saw him as a beloved uncle. This is very much in evidence.’

Saïd came from an illustrious family. His father, Mohamed Pacha Saïd, had been prime minister of Egypt, while Safinaz Zulficar, who became Queen Farida on her marriage, was his niece. She was close to her uncle. ‘As a girl, she used to run barefoot across the fields to see him,’ says Orloff. ‘He said that your life is your canvas — you must fix your horizon and reach for that.’ Safinaz refused King Farouk’s marriage proposal several times before accepting. ‘I think her horizons didn’t include becoming the queen of Egypt,’ says Orloff.

Few artists were as skilled at capturing the strange, equivocal power of pre-revolutionary Egypt as Saïd. Like the work of the Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy, Saïd’s art seems to embody an idea of early modern Egypt, a place where the ancient hovers over the present like the fine sand and sea-damp that varnishes the air.

Saïd painted whirling dervishes and provincial money men, lambent-eyed women and street hawkers, against a backdrop of minarets and horse-drawn carriages, the pale hot light and lengthening rays of the afternoon sun shimmering on the flat, alluvial landscape. Deep within his paintings is a feverish glow — the sign of a supernatural agency at work. ‘He studied the European masters, but developed something of his own: a profoundly Egyptian style, creating his own visual language,’ says Orloff. It is for this reason that he is considered the father of modernism in the Middle East and Egypt.

The portrait of Princess Fadia alludes to the formality of Egyptian court life. ‘It was very strict. She had to ask permission to see her father; she wasn’t allowed to walk in the street on her own or meet people. She was a lonely little girl,’ says Orloff. Escape came in riding her pony, Black Beauty, along the seafront, chafed by the desiccated winds blowing from the deserts of Africa.

The former queen and her daughter were eventually reunited in Beirut, where Farida settled until civil war broke out. Her home was bombed, but the portrait survived and was moved to Paris, where Farida lived in a modest apartment. Her daughter had been sent to boarding school in Switzerland and made a life for herself there, breeding racehorses with her husband, Pierre-Said Orloff, and working as a translator.

‘My mother found it difficult to speak about her life in Egypt before the revolution,’ says Orloff. Towards the end of her life, she said what she missed most about Egypt was the smile of the people and galloping along the hot sand on her pony.

When she died suddenly in 2002, Egypt’s then president Hosni Mubarak allowed the family to bring her home. She was the first member of the monarchy to be officially buried in the royal crypt in the Al-Rifa’i Mosque in Cairo since the abdication.

Recalling that day, Orloff says he was overwhelmed by the thousands of people who arrived to pay their respects. ‘I remember thinking, “Well mother, you wanted to see the Egyptian smile — here it is.” And when we entered the crypt the sand was still warm, so she was given that, too.’

MAWASIM: 20 Years of Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art, a landmark live auction at The Abu Dhabi EDITION on 1 November 2026, marks 20 years since Christie’s first sale in the UAE. The pre-sale viewing, alongside a series of talks and workshops, will take place from 28 October to 1 November 2026 at The Abu Dhabi EDITION, Al Bateen Marina, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Find out more