The Drawing of the House of Sheik Sadat, Cairo by the British painter Frank Dillon (1832–1908) depicts a genre scene in a reception chamber (qā*ʿa), with the wooden lattices of an oriel (mashrabiyya*), as well as stucco and glass windows with geometric motifs.
Pencil drawing on paper.
Dillon campaigned passionately for the preservation of Islamic architecture when the wave of modernisation imposed by Europe and the local dynasty in the mid-19th century threatened to destroy ‘old Cairo’ (Arnhold, 2008, p. 235). With a view to protecting and recording the city’s ancient buildings, Dillon produced accurate paintings of Cairene domestic interiors in the 1870s. The Cairene house of Sheikh Sadat was also portrayed in several watercolours by Dillon (IG_100, IG_101, and V&A, 859-1900). One of the watercolours (V&A, 859-1900) is dated 1873.
The house was also recorded in contemporary photographs taken by the French photographer Félix Bonfils (IG_477) in the 1870s and by the Italian photographer Beniamino Facchinelli (1839–1895) (IG_478).
Arnhold, H. (2008). Orte der Sehnsucht. Mit Künstlern auf Reisen. Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner.
Volait, M. (2021). Antique Dealing and Creative Reuse in Cairo and Damascus 1850–1890. Leiden: Brill.
