Lot 31: PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN f - ALOYSIUS O'KELLY B. 1853 MOSQUE OF EZBECK, CAIRO, EGYPT

signed l.r.: Aloysius O'Kelly; titled and numbered no.4 on an old label and titled on a further label both attached to the stretcher

oil on canvas

EXHIBITED

London, Royal Academy, 1886, no.336 (Mosque of Sultan Hassan, Cairo, was no.342);
London, Irish Exhibition at Olympia, 1888, no.134;
Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy, 1889, no.195 (Mosque of Sultan Hassan, Cairo, was no.398);
Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, 1911, no.433

CATALOGUE NOTE

Mosque of Ezbeck, Cairo, one of the artist's seminal paintings, is the most important large scale work by O'Kelly to have appeared on the auction market in recent years. Previously known from a watercolour, it was probably executed circa 1883 at the same time as another similar sized picture, Mosque of Sultan Hassan, Cairo, also known from a watercolour study. Both were exhibited together at the Royal Academy and the Royal Hibernian Academy suggesting that they were conceived as companion pieces.

O'Kelly first visited Cairo circa 1883 when he was appointed as a journalist for the Pictorial World to record the war in Sudan between the Nationalist Rebels led by the Mahdi in their Jihad against the Anglo-Egyptian army. His illustrations are far from straightforward propaganda from the British point of view as one might expect from an artist who was protected by the British Army and living with them. They are, rather, more subtle illustrations from the rebel perspective and belie O'Kelly's own Nationalist Irish background.

As such, O'Kelly's orientalist works are not conventional representations of what Edward Said has termed the oriental 'other', concentrating in large part on exotic women or the violent and agressive nature of the foreign 'savage'. In fact, despite having studied in Gérôme's studio, O'Kelly's Orientalist works couldn't be more different in their focus from works such as Gérôme's La Grande Piscine à Bursa (sold in these rooms, 14 June 2004, lot 112) where idealised women bathe themselves in an exotic hammam. In fact, as Niamh O'Sullivan has pointed out, in all of O'Kelly's orientalist works, only one bare female breast is depicted.

O'Kelly focused instead on the details of every day life. In Mosque of Ezbeck, he has captured a quiet moment of prayer, the devotional atmosphere enhanced by the lofty dimension of the mosque's structure. Rather that simply reproducing detail in order to render the scene more 'Oriental', O'Kelly appears to show a genuine respect for the architecture, labouring over the fine details of the tiling, ogee arches and the mosque furnishings. Indeed, his sensitive representation reflects his empathy with the Nationalist rebels and it was whilst in Cairo with his brother James J. O'Kelly, that they met the leaders of the underground movement to advise them on their political strategy.

We are grateful to Niamh O'Sullivan for her assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.

127 by 101.5cm.; 50 by 40in.