NOW AND TEN

Mahmoud Saïd, Lever de soleil sur le Nil, 1945. Private collection.
(Christie’s Dubai, April 2010; price realised: US$902,500).
© Christie’s Images Ltd., 2010
Mahmoud Saïd, Le Nil vers Béni Hassan, 1951.
Private collection. © Hesham Salama, Alexandria
Following the success of its sale of Mahmoud Saïd’s Négresse aux bracelets
in October 2015 (price realised: US$665,000), Christie’s Dubai is proud to
present two further exceptional paintings from the collection of Hussein Bek
Saïd, amongst which this breathtaking view of the Nile at El Derr, located in
Lower Nubia. Hussein was the artist’s only brother, besides his three sisters,
Zeinab, Nahed and Badiha, the latter having died unexpectedly at a very
young age. Hussein worked at Studio Misr, Egypt’s leading film production
studio since 1936, that remained Hollywood’s counterpart for more than three
decades. Mahmoud Saïd painted his brother’s portrait, wearing a pilot’s outfit
in 1923, the year following La Cathédrale de Lausanne (lot 120, sale 1242) was
painted, as well as the portrait of Hussein and Indji Hanem Zulficar’s son
Mohamed, in 1945.
Le Nil à El Derr stands out from Mahmoud Saïd’s oeuvre as one of the most
beautiful Nile scenes he painted, characterised by the warm light emanating
from its complex colour scheme and by the lyricism of its simplified
composition. Saïd painted several Nile scenes from various areas of Egypt,
from Aswan to Béni Hassan, from Luxor to Karnak, yet the present work is
the only known painting depicting El Derr and is his earliest large-scale view
of the Nile. Many of his ‘Nile-scapes’ are of relatively small format and often,
Saïd’s Nile compositions feature figures and sail boats, that are both given
more or less prominent roles in the painting. Several of these works also
hint to surrounding archeological sites, such as in Le Nil à Béni Hassan, or as
evident in the present work. El Derr is renowned for its ‘speos’ or rock temple
that was built within the rock during the 19th dynasty by Pharaoh Ramses
II. Writer and historian Nicolas Grimal claims that the temple ‘consisted of a
sequence of two hypostyle halls (probably preceded by a forecourt and a pylon)
leading to a triple sanctuary where a cult of statues of Ramesses II, Amon-Re,
Ra-Horakhty and Ptah was celebrated’ (N. Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt,
London 1992, p. 259). Although historians disagree on the exact date of El
Derr Temple’s construction, there is no doubt that it was an important cult
site during the Pharaonic era, which Mahmoud Saïd pays homage to in his
luminous rendering of his Nile scene in El Derr.
In this painting, Mahmoud Saïd includes one of his beloved motifs, the
quintessentially Egyptian vessels called feluccas, peacefully floating on the
Nile with their abstract triangular sails. The feluccas are the main characters of
the scene, casting a shadow on the actual human figures, whose significance
is purely decorative rather than meaningful. Saïd subtly plays with the
mirroring effects of the water, delicately blending in the reflections of each
element from his composition, with the bright beige and brown tones from the
El Derr rock temple pouring into the Nile, as well as the white touches from the
felucca sails and the olive green of the trees along the Nile riverbanks. These
thick touches of various pigments that masterfully achieve the effect of the
water’s transparence due to Saïd’s skillful colour combinations underline the
calmness and almost stillness of the scene represented and soon became one
of the Alexandrian artist’s signature techniques. Lever de soleil sur le Nil of
1945 is comparable in terms of subject matter, style, technique and format to
Le Nil à El Derr, yet the overall light effects in both works are radically different.
The former is dominated by cool blue and soft purple tones through which a
radiant sun pierces through to bring a fresh morning light to the bustle of a
daily Nile scene. The blue sky and the green plain of fertile land in the lower
right corner of the El Derr landscape are completely overruled by the earthy
sepia, ochre and beige tones of Lower Nubia’s topography, allowing the colour
of the stones of El Derr Temple to permeate through the entire composition.
In terms of the painting’s structure, Saïd emphasised the linear movement of
the feluccas through the horizontality of the composition that is occasionally
interrupted by the curves of the feluccas’ bulging sails or by the suggestive
blocks of rock alluding to the archeological site of El Derr. Painted in 1933, it
seems that Said was not as rigid with his composition than he was for later
comparable works, such as Le Nil à Béni Hassan of 1951. As opposed to the El
Derr landscape, the latter’s structural lines are strengthened by the verticals
created by the feluccas’ sails and the palm trees’ trunks and by the curved
diagonals from the Béni Hassan rocks, replicating the movement emerging
from the felucca’s bulging sail. All these compositional lines converge at
the top of the sailboat’s mast in the foreground, creating a peaceful balance
within the composition yet at the same time breathing in a mystical dynamism
to this scene on the Nile, very characteristic of Mahmoud Saïd’s pictorial
structure. The golden light emanating from Le Nil à El Derr simultaneously
achieves a mystical dynamism and an eternal standstill of this Nile scene,
in view of paying tribute to Egypt’s Golden Age and celebrating the Nubian
people’s activities, achievements and heritage. This blend of past and present,
commonly seen throughout Saïd’s oeuvre, enables him to capture the
essence of his country’s history and people and to emphasise their resistance
to all forms of modernisation in the context of a changing nation seeking
independence from colonial powers. Just like the El Derr temple is embedded
within the soil and rock of the Nubian land, the people are deeply-rooted in
their history and cultural heritage. The reflection of the temple and land into
the waters of the Nile and the flecks of colour reflecting from the clothes of the
people in the feluccas, combine all these various elements into one, embodying
the intrinsic values of Egypt.
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