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112 EssayMahmoud Saïd, Le Dancing, oil on board, 70.5x57cm., 1934. Mahmoud Saïd Museum, Alexandria.Psychological Tensions: Artist Versus LawyerBesides resisting the whirlwind of modernization andattempting to reconcile his social background withthat of some of his sitters, Saïd was also faced withpsychological tensions on a daily basis. As per his family’sexpectations, he pursued a lawyer’s career, yet, as provedthrough his prolific oeuvre, he was an avid painter. It wasonly in 1947, at the age of fifty, shortly before his father’sdeath, that he resigned from his position to dedicatehimself to painting. Throughout his artistic career hemanaged to bring together on canvas his professionalouter world, that of the courtroom where he worked,and his inner passion for art by painting portraits ofhis colleagues. Portrait du Président: Jaspar Brinton isa very detailed and academic work that was paintedin 1945 (53). Brinton (1878-1973) was an Americanlawyer and judge who was appointed as an Americanrepresentative at Egypt’s Mixed Courts (54). At the time
Essay113Mahmoud Saïd, Femme aux boucles d’or, oil on canvas, 80x60cm., 1933.May Zeid & Adel Youssry Khedr Collection, Cairo.Saïd realized his portrait, Brinton was the president ofthe Court, from 1943 to 1948, before becoming a legaladvisor to the American Embassy in Egypt until 1953.As early as 1930, Jasper Yeates Brinton already describedhis fellow judge Mahmoud Saïd as ‘Egypt’s leadingpainter’ in the book he published on The Mixed Courtsin Egypt . Although the people he worked with seem tohave discerned his talent not only as a lawyer but also asan artist, it seems to have been much more challengingto gain similar recognition from his own family. LilianeKarnouk recalls the interview she had with ex-QueenFarida, Mahmoud Saïd’s niece, on 22nd October1983, in which she remembered how her relatives wereindifferent to her uncle’s art and how this lack of moralMahmoud Saïd, Portrait de Jasper Brinton, oil on panel, 108.5x84.5cm.,1944.support affected him. Being a <strong>full</strong>-time artist was not aprestigious profession at the time and not somethingSaïd’s family would have been proud of. Karnouk quotesthe former Queen’s most revealing passage expressingher relatives’ attitude, ‘Besides they could not relateto his art. The closest they came to showing a sign ofapproval was when they acknowledged that it must begood because foreigners seemed to appreciate it’ .Saïd’s struggle to come to terms with a disapprovingfamily and with his daily function as a judge permeatesparticularly throughout his self-portraits. He depictshimself in six known paintings, possibly twice in 1919,once circa 1920, and again in 1924, 1929 and 1931.Two charcoal sketches of circa 1930 and another of
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