Shafik Gabr started his collection of Orientalist art in 1993 by acquiring a painting by Ludwig Deutsch entitled Egyptian Priest Entering a Temple. This painting bought an auction in Paris marked the start of a collection that now includes over 100 works and continuos to grow.
The Shafik Gabr Collection is today amongst the top Orientalism Collections in the world as well as one of the very few to count some of the finest examples of the greatest masters of Orientalism such as Jean-Leon Gerome, Frederick Arthur Bridgman, Gustav Bauernfeind and many others.
Important for both scholars and art lovers, The Shafik Gabr Collection impresses us with its richness and variety. It includes masterpieces by some of the major nineteenth- and twentieth- century Orientalist found in private hands today and demonstrates the owner's appreciation of differences as well as similarities in European visions of the versatile and diverse Orient. The selection of paintings it illustrates the owner's evolving taste, his relationship with the world of Orienalism.
This impressive Orientalist Collection is a harmonious ''kaleidoscope'' of genres , presenting the Orient through a variety of forms, styles and techniques, and reveling to the viewer the mysterious East with its bright colours, its exotic and leisurely lifestyle. Over the years, it has become one of the most complete and magnificent tributes dedicated to the world of Orientalism and as such some of the most renowned experts in this field have contributed to this book in order to mark its importance in the art world.