CHARLES WILDA | THE DANCER

Sale: Christie's, New York, 28 May 1982, lot 57

Mathaf Gallery, London

Purchased from the above 

Caroline Juler, Najd Collection of Orientalist Paintings, London, 1991, p. 231, catalogued & illustrated

Possibly, Paris, 1883

London, Mathaf Gallery, New Year Collection, London, 1983, illustrated in the catalogue

Krems, Kunsthalle Krems, Harem, the Private World of the Orient, 2005, illustrated in the catalogue

In a North African courtyard, a dancer with a tambourine and castanets in hand, accompanied by two musicians, performs to a private audience. In this work, Wilda masterfully evokes not only the sense of the figure’s movement as she reaches into the air, but also the celebratory atmosphere of the setting, which has been sealed by curtains to avoid any interruptions. 

Charles Wilda was trained at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts under the direction of the Orientalist artist Leopold Carl Müller (1834–1892). The prestigious academy produced many of the finest Orientalist painters, among them Jean Discart, Rudolf Ernst, and Ludwig Deutsch, almost all of whom practiced in Paris. Indeed, the present work, inscribed 'Paris', would have been worked up from sketches and photographs in the artist's studio there.