Portrait of a man wearing a burnous and turban

Oil on canvas, unlined

68.8 x 50.5 cm. (27 x 19 ¾ in.)

We are grateful to Charles Greig for confirming the attribution to Müller, after first-hand inspection.

This striking portrait study can be dated confidently to 1882, the year of one of Leopold Carl Müller’s visits to England, or very shortly thereafter, thanks to the Brodie & Middleton stamp on the reverse of the canvas, whose typeface corresponds to canvasses produced by the Covent Garden-based firm between 1880 and 83.[1]

Müller was greatly acclaimed in Britain, often sending works for exhibition there following the advice Edward Prince of Wales and the art dealer Henry Wallis, both of whom he had met in Cairo. Wallis was responsible for the sale of a large number of Müller’s paintings to English collectors, leading the artist to first visit London in 1875, and then several times thereafter. Müller therefore likely executed this painting on his 1882 visit, and indeed to judge from his features, the sitter appears to be Northern European. Yet he wears a burnous, a long hooded cloak of coarse woollen fabric traditionally worn by Berbers, and a turban. The sitter is possibly therefore a European who had some sort of link to North Africa through study or travel. However, if painted in England, more likely perhaps is that the sitter has been dressed by Müller and that the picture is therefore more of an artistic exercise, which would reconcile the unfinished nature of the painting, along with the lack of signature (uncommon but not unknown in Müller’s oeuvre). Of course, it is not impossible that the picture was painted in Egypt, with Müller taking the canvas with his artistic supplies. Alexandria, the gateway to the Nile, was a melting-pot of peoples from all over the Mediterranean, including many from the Balkans, much of which was still nominally under Ottoman control around 1880, like Egypt itself.