Mahmoud Moukhtar, The Bride of the Nile, 1929, limestone, 50 x 60 x 148 cm (Mahmoud Moukhtar Museum, Cairo; photo: © Nadia Radwan)
The Bride of the Nile that wasn’t
Examining Mahmoud Moukhtar’s iconic sculpture The Bride of the Nile may align with what viewers expect of a modern artist from Egypt. At first sight, the work appears to be a direct quotation of ancient Egyptian art framed by the Art Deco aesthetic of 1929. However, a closer reading of this significant sculpture, representing a kneeling female nude on a pedestal, raises several questions that reveal the complexities and contradictions of the modern artistic cultures of the Arab world. Who exactly is this Bride of the Nile? What does her nudity, her graceful and somewhat subdued kneeling posture, with her head leaning toward her hand, convey about the context in which she was created? Is she trapped in the timeless ideal of an Orientalist gaze and an ancient past when Egypt was ruled by pharaohs, or does she evoke the agency of the modern Egyptian woman?
A trans-Mediterranean modernism
Mahmoud Moukhtar, recognized as one of Egypt’s leading modern artists, was born in the Nile Delta, the son of the mayor of Tanbara, a village where he spent his childhood. In 1908, he was among the first students to enroll in the newly established School of Fine Arts in Cairo. The young student moved to Cairo at a time of significant modernization. Admission to the school was then free of charge, supported by its founder Prince Yusuf Kamal, and the institution was headed by the French sculptor Guillaume Laplagne. Students were trained in the academic tradition of the French Beaux-Arts and engaged with traditional Western genres, including the nude, landscape, and portraiture, by copying models, photographic reproductions, and plaster casts imported from European museums.
Mahmoud Moukhtar in his workshop in Paris, c. 1913–14 (Archives Eimad Abou Ghazi, © Dr. Eimad Abou Ghazi)
Engraving by Louis Lecoeur, Fontaine des Incurables, c. 1810, 16.1 x 11.3 cm (Musée Carnavalet, Paris)
Like many artists of his generation, Mahmoud Moukhtar received a grant to study art in Europe, and was sent to Paris to advance his skills in sculpture. Moukhtar would spend most of the interwar years in Paris where he studied works he had previously only encountered in copies, particularly the sculptures of Auguste Rodin and Antoine Bourdelle.
Despite being in Paris, Egypt remained ever-present in Moukhtar’s surroundings; he could see reflections of his own heritage in the Art Deco style visible in Paris, a phenomenon stemming from French Egyptomania. For example, the Fontaine des Incurables, located in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, was built in 1806 during the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, in the neo-Egyptian style inspired by Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign.
Upper body (detail), Mahmoud Moukhtar, The Bride of the Nile, 1929, limestone, 50 x 60 x 148 cm (Mahmoud Moukhtar Museum, Cairo; photo: Abel Paris, Archives Eimad Abou Ghazi, © Dr. Eimad Abou Ghazi)
Aristide Maillol, La Méditerranée, c. 1906, marble, 21.6 x 17.2 x 12.7 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
This translation of European Art Deco elements is evident in the Bride of the Nile’s stylized headdress delicately adorned with feathers and topped with a bird’s head, as well as in her jewelry and the clean, elongated, symmetrical lines of her body.
Her posture, kneeling with a reclining head, also recalls Aristide Maillol’s nudes, and in particular, one of the sculptors’ most famous works, Méditerrannée. Similarly, Moukhtar’s Bride, carved out of limestone, a material local to the Nile valley, is an allegory of Egypt, and her nudity may be understood as the reclaiming of artistic modernity and its awakening in Egypt. The Bride of the Nile would later be exhibited in 1937 at the Paris International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques in front of the Egyptian Pavilion, in a context celebrating international Art Deco modern architecture.
While the young sculptor was enjoying his bohemian life in Paris, despite facing significant financial difficulties, he was constantly reminded by the Egyptian authorities of the important role he would have to play upon his return to Cairo. During his years in France, Egypt experienced anti-colonial movements demanding the end to British occupation that culminated with the 1919 Revolution led by the nationalist leader Saad Zaghloul, who became a symbol of Egypt’s struggle for independence that led to the restoration of the monarchy in 1922.
Mahmoud Moukhtar supervising the achievement of Egypt’s Awakening (Nahdat Misr), c. 1927 (Archives Eimad Abou Ghazi, © Dr. Eimad Abou Ghazi)
The pharaoh-peasant and Egyptian feminists
The origins of The Bride of the Nile can be traced back to a series of sculptures the artist produced while in Paris. After the First World War, Moukhtar began to work on the small-scale model for a monument, Egypt’s Awakening (Nahdat Misr). The model, accepted by the Salon des Artistes Français in 1920, received excellent reviews in the Parisian press. This recognition led a delegation from the Wafd Party (the national Party founded by Saad Zaghloul) to visit Moukhtar’s studio in Paris, and then appeal to the Egyptian people for support in financing the larger monument through national subscription.
Egypt’s Awakening became the visual symbol of the Nahda, and was intended to be erected in a public square in Cairo. Carved from pink granite brought through the Nile from Aswan, the monument features a Sphinx standing proudly on its front legs, alongside an Egyptian peasant (fellaha) unveiling, symbolizing a new era of the country’s emancipation and modernization. It was officially inaugurated on May 20, 1928, in Bab al-Hadid Square, opposite the Cairo Central Railway Station. Egypt’s Awakening was displaced in 1954, and replaced by an ancient monumental statue of Ramses II, which stands today in front of Cairo University.
Mahmoud Moukhtar, Egypt’s Awakening in front of Cairo Railway Station (photo: Lehnert & Landrock, collection of the author)
That same year Moukhtar showcased his sculptures in a solo exhibition in Paris held at the renowned gallery Bernheim-Jeune, organized by Georges Grappe, then the curator of the Musée Rodin. He presented a series of elegant feminine figures inspired by Egyptian rural life and ancient goddesses. Enthroned in the midst of the exhibition hall was The Bride of the Nile.
View of Mahmoud Moukhtar’s exhibition at Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris, March 1930 (photo: Archives Eimad Abou Ghazi, © Dr. Eimad Abou Ghazi)
In this series, Moukhtar created an ideal image of the contemporary Egyptian fellaha, who became emblematic of the Nahda and symbolized authenticity, endurance, and connection to land. During that same period, he befriended Huda Shaarawi, an intellectual, patron of the arts, and founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union who provided him with financial support. Moukhtar’s representation of the fellaha also resonated with the idealized image of the peasant embraced by Egyptian feminists. The women of the urban elite viewed the fellaha as an emancipated working woman, who managed household finances, who was not compelled by tradition to cover her entire face with a veil that would hinder her work in the fields.
Mahmoud Moukhtar, To the River, 1929, limestone, 14 x 36 x 38 cm (Mahmoud Moukhtar Museum, Cairo; photo: © Nadia Radwan)
From this perspective, the gesture of the fellaha unveiling in Mahmoud Moukhtar’s Egypt’s Awakening may allude to a historical event when Huda Shaarawi and her colleague and friend Sayza Nabaraoui publicly unveiled their faces on the platform of Cairo’s Central Railway Station in 1923 upon returning from the Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, which they attended in Rome, Italy. At the time, such gestures of political emancipation were in fact far more revolutionary than the depiction of nude female bodies, which were widely accepted as a genre of the fine arts, especially when presented as allegorical representations of Egypt.
Face and headdress (detail), Mahmoud Moukhtar, The Bride of the Nile, 1929, limestone, 50 x 60 x 148 cm (Mahmoud Moukhtar Museum, Cairo; photo: © Nadia Radwan)
Marcelle Dubreil (photo: Archives Eimad Abou Ghazi, © Dr. Eimad Abou Ghazi)
A Parisian bride?
During his years in Paris, Moukhtar met a French woman named Marcelle Dubreil, who became his companion, as well as the model for several of his sculptures. The similarities between the pose, facial features, and the elaborate headdress of The Bride of the Nile and a photographic portrait of Marcelle Dubreil found in Mahmoud Moukhtar’s family archives, suggest that it was after her that he fashioned The Bride of the Nile.
Looking back at this sculpture, which embodies references to ancient Egyptian statuary, the Nile as a metaphor of agriculture and economic wealth, Art Deco stylization, the emancipation of Egyptian women, and Rodin and Bourdelle’s lessons, we can better understand the many layers embedded in Egyptian artistic modernism during the Nahda.
Following Moukhtar’s premature death at the age of forty-three, Egyptian feminists were the first to call for the restitution of his works that had remained in Paris. Huda Shaarawi argued in L’Egyptienne, the publication of the Egyptian Feminist Union, for the necessity of preserving the sculptor’s works as national heritage in a museum worthy of him, and for perpetuating his memory through an institution that would make his works and life known to the public. She also established the Mahmoud Moukhtar Prize to encourage and support the work of young Egyptian sculptors.
With the assistance of Georges Grappe and members of the Society of Art Lovers based in Cairo, some of Moukhtar’s sculptures were finally returned to Egypt in March 1939, along with The Bride of the Nile. However, it was not until 1962 that the Mahmoud Moukhtar Museum, designed by the renowned architect Ramses Wissa Wassef, opened its doors in Cairo, initiated by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Minister of Culture, Tharwat Okasha, almost thirty years after Huda Shaarawi’s call for the creation of a museum.
Mahmoud Moukhtar’s oeuvre had a long-lasting impact on Egypt’s modern art and culture. He paved the way for future generations of artists to explore and express personal and national narratives through their artistic practice. The Bride of the Nile equally embodies the transnational character of his work, unfolding between Cairo and Paris, and his search for an approach that reflected the Nahda aspirations, as the Arab world was beginning to form new identities.
