01 Painting by the Orientalist Artists in the Nineteenth-Century, with footnotes, 68

Raphael von Ambros, 1845-1895, AUSTRIAN

THE TOBACCO SELLER, CAIRO, c. 1891

Oil on panel

75 by 62cm., 29½ by 24¼in.

Private collection

Von Ambros depicts a busy tobacco stall outside a coffee shop in the streets of Cairo. On the left, two young men roll cigarettes which have been neatly hung by the merchant on his stall. On the right, a customer samples a cigarette, pondering a purchase. Above the stall on a shelf stand five glass narghile, or hookah vessels. Water pipes were an alternative method of tobacco consumption introduced to the Middle east and Europe from India. More on this painting

Born in Prague, Raphael von Ambros was a pupil of Hans Makart (1840-1884) at the famous Vienna Academy, where he would have studied alongside an extraordinary generation of Orientalist painters such as Jean Discart (French, 1856-1944), Ludwig Deutsch (1855-1935) and Rudolf Ernst (1854-1932). Like his contemporaries, Ambros found the perfect audience for his Cairo street scenes at the Paris Salon, where he exhibited from 1887. More on Raphael von Ambros

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