(Klosterneuburg 1863–1929 Salzburg)
The Carpet Dealer, signed A. L. Mielich, oil on canvas, 98 x 70 cm, framed

Provenance:
February 1929 acquired from the artist, collection Baron Carl von Born (1876-1957), Vienna;
By descent to his wife Baroness Maria Renata von Born (1899-1948), Pörtschach;
Private Collection, Austria.

Compare:
Herbert Zemen, Der Orientmaler Alphons Mielich 1863–1929. Materialien zur Biographie, Vienna 2013, p. 176, ill. 8 “Beim Teppichhändler”.

Alphons Leopold Mielich came from a family of painters and goldsmiths in southern Germany and initially pursued a military career. In 1887 he was medically retired from duties as an artillery lieutenant and sent on a trip to Egypt in 1889 to convalesce, during which he taught himself to paint. This trip was followed by a three-year stay in Paris, where Mielich trained as an artist and from there travelled to Algiers, Spain and England. He became a member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus in 1894 on his return to the Austrian capital. In 1901 Mielich went on an expedition to Jordan with the orientalist Alois Musil, where he created illustrations for a 41-plate publication on the desert castle Quseir’ Amra.

Mielich’s colourful and detailed images of markets, bazaars and the apparent everyday life of Egyptians offered contemporary audiences a glimpse of Oriental street life, although the pictures themselves were staged scenes. The present lot, for example, shows carpet dealers haggling. In the centre of the picture, the viewer’s gaze falls to the magnificently designed carpets. Such oriental carpets were well-known and expensive furnishings in many bourgeois houses of the nineteenth century. Although the carpet depicted here is the artist’s own interpretation rather than an existing pattern, the scene nonetheless seems to be derived directly from the hustle and bustle of a bazaar.

Mielich’s views of Cairo earned him the admiration and patronage of Emperor Francis Joseph I, who bought several of his paintings. Following his international success, in 1901 Mielich was entrusted by the Austrian Academy of Sciences with the task of documenting Western Arabia in pictures.