Sotheby’s annual Orientalist Sale to take place as part of Orientalist & Middle Eastern Week: 15-21 April 2016
This Spring in London, Sotheby’s will present Orientalist & Middle Eastern Week, dedicated to over 1000 years of artworks and objects celebrating the culture of the Middle East and the wider Islamic world. Comprising five sales in total and running from 15-21 April 2016, the series of auctions includes Sotheby’s annual Orientalist Sale, Arts of the Islamic World, the relaunched 20th Century Art / Middle East sale, Alchemy: Objects of Desire, a single-owner sale featuring Iranian and international contemporary art, and The Library of Mohamed and Margaret Makiya.

Held annually in London since 2012, The Orientalist Sale on 19 April showcases 40 lots representing the finest and most sought-after examples in this field. Exhibited alongside the Arts of the Islamic World, together the two sales offer an opportunity to unite Orientalist paintings with rare and precious works of art from countries under Islamic patronage. This year’s sale will be led by Ludwig Deutsch’s Morning Prayers, a luminous masterpiece of 1902, estimated at £500,000-800,000.

Claude Piening, Sotheby’s Head of Orientalist Paintings, commented: “We have assembled a particularly strong group of works by the key exponents of the genre, who hailed from across Europe and America. All shared a fascination for the richness and colour of Islamic world, be it Bedouin life in the Sahara, worship in the mosques of Cairo and Istanbul, or the hustle and bustle of the streets and markets of Egypt and the Levant.”