Charles Wilda (Austrian, 1854-1907)
The Palace Guard
signed, inscribed and dated 'CH.WILDA PARIS 1884' (lower right)
oil on panel
33 x 23.5cm (13 x 9 1/4in).
Footnotes:
Provenance
Private collection, USA.
Anon. sale, Bonhams, London, 2 March 2016, lot 59.
Private collection, UK (acquired at the above sale).

Born in Vienna, Charles Wilda studied at the city's Academy of Fine Arts where he was tutored by the famed Orientalist artist Leopold Carl Müller. The Vienna Academy of the 1870s and 1880s produced a prodigious group of Orientalist painters: among Wilda's contemporaries were Jean Discart, Rudolf Ernst and Ludwig Deutsch. Like his contemporaries, Wilda was drawn to Paris, working there in the early 1880s. He also produced a group of works painted in Cairo in the 1890s. Wilda exhibited in Vienna between 1887 and his death in 1907.

The panel provides a strong and stable support. Examination under UV reveals a few tiny spots of infilling, along the lower framing edge and to the dark area on the right hand side.