Gustav Bauernfeind
Street Scene in Jerusalem (Dar al-Sha'bani near Bab el-Hadid)
Oil on panel. 35 x 23 cm.
Signed and dated lower left: G. Bauernfeind Jerusalem 81.
Adhesive label to verso of panel: “ P. Kaeser's / Kunsthandlung / München / 5. Briennerstrasse 5. No. 33”
Our painting by the significant German Orient painter Gustav Bauernfeind depicts the portal of the madrasah Dar al Sha'bani, a Qur'an school in Jerusalem. The dating places the painting in the period of the artist's first trip to the Orient from 1880 to 1882 and thus belongs to Bauernfeind's earliest works with an oriental motif. As a result of the lasting impressions of his first trip, the artist thereafter turned almost exclusively to this theme. He undertook further trips to the Orient and finally moved to Palestine in 1896.
Our view shows a woman in front of the colourful wall of the Qur'an school with an amphora in one hand and a coin in the other. A female seller sits with her wares in front of the steps, and a beggar opposite. An only slightly different version of this composition is illustrated in Petra S. Kühner: Gustav Bauernfeind. Gemälde und Aquarelle (=Monographien zur Bildenden Kunst 5), Frankfurt am Main et al. 1996, p. 213, no. 22, ill. 9. The motif of the portal of Dar al Sha'bani is also seen in a watercolour by Bauernfeind, in the Staatlichen Graphischen Sammlung München (inv.no. 1907:308).
We would like to thank Dr Petra Versteegh-Kühner, Rekem, for the confirmation of the authorship of this work based on digital photographs.