F orming a panoptic picture of North African, Middle Eastern & Ottoman Society a century and more ago, the Najd Collection is the vision of one collector active in the 1980s. Eager to look beyond the confines of their own Western experience, all the artists represented travelled to and spent time in the region to portray first-hand what they saw and experienced. The legacy of their work has provided an invaluable documentary narrative of a world that has since been transformed by modernisation and, in some cases, conflict.

Following the market-defining sale of 40 works in October 2019, Sotheby’s is honoured to present a further 34 Orientalist paintings from the Najd Collection as a stand-alone sale.

In this episode of Anatomy of an Artwork, discover Gustav Bauernfeind’s monumental depiction of Jaffa in Palestine and learn about the rich and complex history of one of the most ancient trading ports in the Levant.