Lot 1269 Dα

Carl Schirm found fame during his lifetime through his monumental landscape paintings of the Orient. The National Gallery of Berlin, the Rudolphinum in Prague and the Museum of Wiesbaden, coincidentally his place of birth, have all acquired works for their collections (Thieme-Becker).

Schirm studied at Karlsruhe Academy under Hans Fredrik Gude and Eugen Bracht. In 1880/1881, along with Bracht, he travelled to Syria, Palestine and Egypt, creating numerous sketches of landscapes upon which he based his grandiose landscape vedute after his return. Our painting was created in 1884 in Breslau. The date and title of the work, as well as the price of 2500 RM, can be found on a label on the reverse, written by hand and likely by the artist himself.

The painting depicts the mountain Jebel el-Deir. To Christians, it is the so-called Cloister Mountain, north of the St. Catherine's Cloister, that in turn is the site of the Miracle of the Burning Bush. Before the monumental mountain is the gravesite of Sheikh Nabi Saleh and ruins of ancient dwellings (c. 3000-2700 B.C.). In the midst of the ruins, Schirm depicts a group of Sinai Bedouins. F. v. Bötticher (op.cit.) refers to another view of Jebel el-Deir mountain with the gravesite of the Sheikh, much-revered by Moslems, dated 1883. The whereabouts of said painting is however unknown.