In this richly finished work, a turbaned man pours oil into glass receptacles suspended from an ornate nineteenth-century Syrian bronze lantern stand. The fuel in the glasses can then be lit using wicks to create a circle of lights. The figure is framed by blue and green Moroccan octagonal tiles and inlaid marble wall panels in a Moorish setting. A veritable tapestry in pattern and texture, the composition is a cumulative memory of Ernst’s disparate travels in the Orient. After studying at the Vienna Academy, he travelled to Rome and, in the 1880s, to Andalusia, Morocco, and Tunisia. Later travels would take him to Egypt and, in 1890, to Turkey. From 1885 Ernst turned exclusively to painting Orientalist subjects, which he worked up from the sketches, photographs, souvenirs, and memories accumulated during his travels. Almost all his paintings were executed in his studio in Paris, which he decorated in an eclectic Eastern style, and in which he would paint wearing a taboosh, the better to transport himself mentally into the world created in his panels and canvases.