Leopold Carl Müller (1834-1892) ليوبولد موللر

 

Leopold Carl Müller, Farhat Art Museum Collection

The painting of a young Bedouin woman is oil on canvas measures 25×30 inches. The painting has been attributed to the Austrian artist Leopold Carl Muller. It is part of the F.A.M. in the orientalist collection.

Leopold Carl Müller (1834-1892) is regarded as a founder of the Austrian school of Orientalist painting. Although a number of artists preceded him, he was interested in the Oriental environment for what he perceived as its special artistic qualities. He introduced Austrian painters to this topic and he inspired a generation of pupils. Müller kept a studio in Cairo and spent a considerable amount of time there; he had to strike a careful balance between his duties as an Academy teacher in Vienna and his stays there in 1880s. Moreover he kept a circle of his friends and pupils in both Cairo and Vienna.

Müller visited Egypt from the 1870s onwards but, due to his modest background, could only do so having already started to establish himself as an artist. From 1875-1876, when he spent a winter in Egypt together with Hans Makart – a contemporary artist and remarkable painter of Austrian historicism – and the German Orientalist painter Franz Lenbach, his career started to take off. Müller was prolific in production, and original in his treatment of Oriental themes with respect to the particular light and colouring of the landscape and scenery. His pictures conveyed an atmosphere of the souk or a Cairo street with the bright, blazing sunlight reflected on walls and sand, and disappearing into hazed horizons.