Rudolf Ernst

Sale: Sotheby's, New York, 24 May 1995, lot 83
Private collection, California (purchased at the above sale; Sotheby's, New York, 23 October 2008, lot 178)
Private collection (purchased at the above sale; Sotheby's, London, 21 April 2015, lot 19)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Sweet Lullaby, of two companions reclining in a sumptuous palace interior, is a veritable feast for the senses, visual and aural. The way in which the womens' flowing silk robes, the tiger pelt, and porcelain tiles and objets are palpably observed and painted demonstrates a deep understanding of different surfaces - in fact, Ernst taught himself the art of faïence, inspired by the tiles he saw on his travels to the Middle East. The scene of idle bliss is in turn overlaid by the suggested tones of the lute, put down following the end of an intimate recital. In 1898, the critic Léon Roger-Milès praised Ernst to the French public in glowing terms. Nothing, he wrote, remained innocent of beauty, whether it was a painting, a piece of music, or a ceramic. 

After studying at the Vienna Academy, Ernst travelled to Rome and, in the 1880s, to Spain, Morocco, and Tunisia. Later travels would take him to Egypt and, in 1890, to Turkey. In 1876, Ernst settled in France, exhibiting regularly at the Salon de la Société des artistes français and eventually taking French nationality. From 1885 Ernst turned exclusively to painting Orientalist subjects, which he worked up from the sketches, photographs, souvenirs, and memories accumulated during his travels. Almost all his paintings were executed in his studio in Paris, which he decorated in an eclectic Eastern style, and in which he would paint wearing a taboosh, the better to think himself into the world created in his paintings.