Page 35 - Orient Collection

11. The Story TELLER

Artist: Wilhelm GENTZ, German, (1822 - 1890)
Execution date (approximate): 1870
Téchnique: Oil on Canvas, (signed lower right)
Measures: 58x 103.5 cm.
Description: It is the finest and most outstanding painting of this German painter. A very
important painting where the story teller is entertaining the crowd at one of the entrances
of the city of Cairo-Egypt, where we can see in the back, the Mosque of Mohamed Ali, a
Tower of the 12 century, and in the rear back the Palaces of the Fatimides.

Early Exhibitions
It was exhibited at the Berlin Royal Academy in 1870.
It was exhibited at the World Art Exhibition in Vienna in 1873.
It was exhibited at the world Art exhibition in Paris in 1878.

Recent Exhibitions
De Delacroix A Kandinsky; L’orientalisme En Europe.
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique 15.10.2010 - 09.01.2011.
Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, München 28.01.2011 - 01.05.2011.
Musées des Beaux-Arts de Marseilles, 27.05.2011 - 28.08.2011.
(Reunion des Musées Nationaux de France, rmn)

Publications
• Les Orientalistes des écoles Allemandes et Autrichienes, p.73.
• The Orientalits by Kristian Davies p.186-187.
• L’Orientalisme En Europe, De Delacroix A Kandinsky, p.264.

Biography
Karl Wilhelm Gentz was a German painter. He was the second son of Johann Christian
Gentz. Initially inscribed in the Berlin Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, he decided at the
age of 21 that he wanted to study the art of painting. He went to the prestigious Atelier
Kloeber and studied there in 1845. He then spent 9 months in the Ambers Academy of
Arts. In 1847 he travelled to Spain and Morocco. In February 1848 he moved to Paris. Here
he painted The Prodigious Son in the Desert. In 1850 he travelled to Malta, Egypt, parts of
Asia, Constantinople and Vienna.
In 1852 he temporarily lived in Berlin and it was here where his first paintings of the
Orientalist life were produced, such as ‘Slave Market’ and ‘Agyptishce school’. Unhappy
with himself, Gentz went back to Paris and joined the studio of Thomas Couture. He drew
here two religious images with figures of natural measure.
Since 1858 back in Berlin, he created a large series of Orientalist representations, majorly Egyptian

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