Mahmoud Said

Mahmoud Said was born to an aristocratic family in Alexandria, Egypt in 1897. His father, Mohamed Said Pacha was Egypt’s Prime Minister under Britain’s protectorate, and his niece Safinaz Zulficar, known as Queen Farida, married King Farouk I of Egypt in 1938. Nevertheless, it is not in relation to his father nor his niece that Mahmoud Said is globally renowned and historically imperative. He is celebrated in his own right. Mahmoud Said is regarded as the Founder of Modern Egyptian Art at a time of intellectual Renaissance (al-Nahda) and is celebrated to this day as an Egyptian master and pioneer.

Although Said’s aristocratic background was not the reason for the global recognition and historical importance he holds across art history today, his social standing paved way for his travels to Europe, which influenced his outlook extensively and consequently his works. He frequently travelled across the continent, to Italy, France, Spain and the Netherlands, where he was exposed to the works of the Old Masters and a wide repertoire of Western aesthetics. The work of Flemish Primitives such as Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling, along with the vibrant colours of the early Italian Renaissance painters, were particularly influential. Alongside his travels, he attended courses at the prestigious Académie Julien and the Grande Chaumière in Paris and frequented the studios of foreign artists living in Alexandria.

Following these extensive and formative travels, in conjunction with his sense of nationalism and unquestionable artistic talents, Said soon established himself as a pioneer of Egyptian art. He organised exhibitions in Cairo, Alexandria, New York, Paris and Rome and participated in international exhibitions in Alexandria, Venice and Madrid. 

Mahmoud Said remains one of the most sought-after Modern Arab artists in the world; his works are rare and a very limited number come to market. His body of work is considered to be the central pillar of twentieth century Egyptian art. Sotheby’s is privileged to offer this iconic and unique 1949 painting by the Egyptian modernist pioneer Mahmoud Said. Le Pirée a l'aube is a rare masterpiece, depicting an extraordinarily industrial scene, which strongly represents the impressions of Said’s European influence, following his travels in the 1920s .

The influence of Western masterpieces during Said's European travels is exceptionally significant and relevant to this work. This rare work is comparable to the 1888 work of Georges Seurat (1859-1891), founder of the 19th century French school of neo-impressionism. Seurat spent the summer of 1888 in the small fishing village of Port-en-Bessin, where he painted six views of the seaport, with the intention of translating, as closely as possible, the brilliance and luminosity of open air - in all its shades and gradations. Said reflects a similar feel, sharing the Impressionist’s goal of translating nature’s vivid shades of light and colour through the canvas, as though he was trying to stop time altogether. Despite the subject being one of movement and motion, it is perhaps due to an idealistic choice of capturing the scene at dawn, that there is a softness and stillness which emanates from the painting.

Similar to Seurat, Said provides a more nuanced sense of depth and perspective to his work by incorporating a complex game of diagonal, horizontal and vertical lines - all while maintaining a harmonious balance between the various elements of the composition. In Le Pirée a l'aube, we witness the geometrical and asymmetrical steadiness, depicted through the slanting lines of the mountains, against the flat lines of the quays and reflections of the sea, interrupted in turn by the upright ship funnels which stand confidently vertical, only to release exhausts of slanted smoulder. The emission softens the strict construction, the generous wafts of smoke are merged softly, yet distinctly into the cloudy dawn-ridden sky that Said has so brilliantly brushed into existence. 

In Said’s studies of Western art history, it is very likely that he came across the famed industrial paintings of Laurence Stephan Lowry (1887-1976). One can compare Le Pirée a l'aube to the industrial landscapes and panoramic cityscapes that Laurence Stephan Lowry painted throughout his career. Lowry’s works presented a generalised impression of the urban environment, dominated by city-like edifices such as smoking chimneys, comparable to the smouldering ships prevalent in Said’s 1949 masterpiece. Said shares Lowry’s ability to organise urban material in a harmonious composition out of a mastery in balancing colours, lighting and hues, which result in an unexpected, emerging spell of optimism and calm. Stylistically, Said had an ability to capture the complexities of light in a way that gave all his paintings an otherworldly, soft dreamlike haze.

Western influences throughout Said’s œuvre are present in numerous ways, yet they are complex and wide-ranging. Said used these influences as a stepping-stone to form his own visual language. He fused and re-interpreted Western visual terminology with what he observed around him and with what he revived from Egypt’s past and his own sense of nationalism. In a letter Said wrote to Beppi-Martin in 1927 (the heightened period of his European travels and influence as a young artist), he specified: “What I am looking for is radiance rather than light. What I want is internal light, not surface light, that blazing and deep light of some of the Limoges enamel work that can be found in the Cluny museum, or in the stain-glass windows of Chartres cathedral; or the one in Barcelona. Surface light pleases for a minute or an hour while internal light captivates slowly, but once it appears, it imprisons us, it possesses us“. (http://www.contemporarypractices.net/essays/volumeXII/mahmoudsa%C3%AFd.pdf, p. 85)

Originating from a port-city himself, for Said, ports have held importance and were reflected in many of his works. Situated in the southwest part of the central plain of Athens, the port of Piraeus sits across the Aegean Sea, north of Said’s native port-city of Alexandria. Piraeus was, and remains, Greece’s largest and most urbanised port. Athens’ agglomeration of urban area sprawls across the port. This painting dated 1949, would have been captured at a time when the port itself would have been amid major setback and impairment – a consequence of Greece’s involvement in World War II. Yet Said chose a silent and peaceful timing to seize the scene during the magic of twilight hours, depicting the busy port between brushes of soothing colours and delicate lighting. The depth and mastery of Said’s colour palette and his talent in representing light are evident in Le Pirée a l'aube, where the canvas in its entirety is shadowed and lit all at once. He captures through his brush, the same phenomena and the play of light that the sun parts within the enchanted spell of dawn.

With its adjacent geographic proximity to Egypt, Said was significantly exposed to Greece and in 1963 he would take a trip to travel the Greek Islands. It was also in the Alexandria studio of his good friend, the Greek painter Aristomenis Angelopoulos (1900-1990), that Said would often gain access to the female models of his famed female nudes. 

Said painted two very distinct scenes of the port cities in Greece – Piraeus and Siros. Painted 15 years apart, Port de Syra – Grèce from 1963-1964 appears more colorful and childlike in palette. A native of Alexandria – a historic port city itself – Said renders both of these Greek ports in a manner unique to the town itself. Here we see Siros with cubist homes cascading down the hill into a humble dock. The harbor looks simple and welcoming, unlike its Piraeus counterpart, painted in 1949, where the magnitude and heavy industrial impact of trade and mercantile activity are conveyed through Said’s manipulation of light. The brushstroke and colors are grave and serious, further lending to the atmosphere of the identity of Piraeus. 

“In Le Pirée a l'aube did the wind and the sea calm down? Our souls and minds are also always in motion, but now it’s time to pause, a time for peace, grandeur and beauty. It seems that the artist wanted us to rest after being so physically and mentally active, so that we drop the anchor and take the time to contemplate the surrounding existence. Said defines time and place as he saw them in Le Pirée a l'aube, he depicted the Athenian port of Piraeus, with ships scattered on the silver sea, suspended in a moment in time, between night and day, before the day starts. He picked dawn as the time of day for this painting to emphasize the beauty and grandeur of the sea, mountains and trees. He gracefully expressed the nature of the place and its magic as he saw it, producing a glorious landscape, painted right before the sunrise. He emotionally interacted with nature and fell in love with the universe.”

(Valerié Didier Hess and Dr. Hussam Rashwan, Mahmoud Said Catalogue Raisonée, Vol.1; Paintings, Milan 2016)

Le Pirée a l'aube, was painted in 1949, two years after Said retired from his legal career, resigning from the judiciary system and devoting his life entirely to painting. Up until that point Said had painted in his spare time, torn between his passion for art and his professional obligations and family expectations. When he painted this masterpiece, Said was finally painting without diversion or duty elsewhere; he was free to channel all his energy and passion towards his canvas and what he treasured. The year 1949 represented a time where Said was celebrated as an artist and recognised for his achievements – he had already left an indelible mark on the Egyptian art scene having been exhibited numerous times in Egypt including at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Alexandria.

Through this present work, one appreciates that Mahmoud Said’s artistic skill has an unparalleled ability to mesmerize and lure an audience into the folds of his creations. A pioneering and well-travelled artist with an avid appreciation and interest for European art movements, Mahmoud Said’s genius is in bringing all these elements into a cohesive and harmonious visual narrative. Most importantly, he does this while remaining anchored in an authentic understanding of Egypt: its hopes and struggles.