Art, Awakening, and Modernity in the Middle East by Esanu Octavian;

Author:Esanu, Octavian;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Painting the Bint al-Balad

The heritage of the Orientalist pictorial tradition played a significant part in establishing other criteria and meanings for the feminine nude. Orientalist paintings were among the most common representations of nudes and probably among the easiest to be seen in Egypt. This was, firstly, because most of the professors at the School of Fine Arts in Cairo, such as the Italian painters Paolo Forcella and Camillo Innocenti, were influenced by Orientalist aesthetics and subjects, as were many European artists who established their private studios in Cairo and Alexandria. Secondly, it was because most of the art collections in Egypt that were open to the public, such as the collection of the Museum of Egyptian Modern Art, displayed works by nineteenth-century French, Italian, and British Orientalist painters.22 The Egyptian pioneers were therefore accustomed to an Orientalist aesthetic when it came to depictions of female nudity. Interestingly, they did not necessarily move away from these stereotypes but rather incorporated new characteristics that gave the feminine nude an entirely different meaning.

The Alexandrian painter and diplomat Muhammad Naji, after receiving his diploma in law in 1910, went to Italy, where he studied for four years at the Scuola Libera del Nudo of the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. In this famous department of the Florentine institution entirely dedicated to the study of the nude, he was trained in the conventional academic manner to study nudes after live models. He then traveled to France and resided in Giverny with the impressionist Claude Monet, who would remain influential on his work. When he returned to Egypt, Naji established his studio in an old Ottoman mansion in Islamic Cairo at the foot of the Citadel. This mansion, located in Darb al-Labbana Street, was referred to as Bayt al-Fann (The House of Art) because it had housed artists, poets, and writers since the early twentieth century.23 The neighborhood around Darb al-Labbana functioned like a micro-Montmartre, and many artists established in this area experienced a sort of Cairene bohême, painting picturesque views of the streets of Islamic Cairo as well as nudes.

The writer Henri Thuile, when he visited Muhammad Naji’s studio at the Bayt al-Fann, described the artist’s nudes as “radiant bodies” and “wavering nymphs.”24 The detailed vocabulary and lyrical style used by the author to describe these “bodies” strongly echoes the famous account by Gustave Flaubert of his carnal encounter with a prostitute from Esna named Kuchuk-Hanem,25 which Edward Said defined as a metaphor of Western domination.26

Figure 4.3 Mahmud Sa‘id, Bint al-Balad, 1943, oil on panel, 70 × 56 cm.

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