By Rudolf Ernst
Located in New York, NY
Rudolf Ernst
Austrian
1854 - 1932
A Dervish
signed R. Ernst lower left
oil on panel
Unframed: 55 by 45cm., 21¾ by 17¾in.
Framed: 90.8 by 81.5cm., 35¾ by 32in.
Dervishes in Islam were members of a Sufi fraternity, religious mendicants who chose or accepted material poverty. Their lives were dedicated to the universal values of love and service, and on the renunciation of ego to reach God, and the alms they received were not for their own good but to help others in need. In most Sufi orders, a dervish was known to practice the ritual prayer of dhikr through dance or religious practices to attain the ecstatic trance to reach God. Their most popular practice was Sama, which is associated with the thirteenth-century mystic Rumi. In folklore, dervishes are often credited with the ability to perform miracles, including healing powers.
In the present work, a dervish descends stairs carrying a kashkul, or beggar’s bowl. Considered to be the most emblematic accoutrement of the wandering dervish, kashkuls were primarily used to collect alms and occasionally as drinking vessels. In later centuries, many functioned as decorative objects since a devoted dervish would be unlikely to carry an elaborately carved kashkul as it would contradict his belief in the renunciation of worldly goods.
BIOGRAPHY
Rudolf Ernst was born in Vienna in 1854 and joined the Academy of Fine Arts at the age of 15. Ernst also studied in the studios of Eisenmenger and Feuerbach at the Viennese Academy. After a sojourn to Rome in 1874, he settled in Paris in 1876 where he would exhibit at the Salon des Artistes Francais for the following six decades, befriending Ludwig Deutsch...
Category
Late 19th Century Rudolf Ernst Art