Another piece by the prolific Willy Burger, whose postcards and Egyptian Hotels Ltd brochure I’ve posted previously. In this case, it’s a single-sheet brochure for the Continental-Savoy dating from the late/early ’30s. The dealer I bought it from also threw in his’n’hers party invitations for a fancy dress ball at the hotel for the evening of 30 January 1932.
Filed under Art and artists, Memorabilia
Last month I blogged about a set of Cairo hotel postcards painted by Swiss artist Willy Friedrich Burger. I was intrigued that he’d choose to paint hotels rather than the usual desert scenes, temples or mosques. Now I know why. Last week, through the magic of eBay, I bought a vintage brochure put out by Egyptian Hotels Ltd. The seller’s description was vague and he posted only photos of the covers, but these were attractive enough that I bid with no idea what was inside. I was delighted to find, then, that the booklet is full of illustrations, and they are all by WF Burger. Included are the images that appear on my postcards. It’s a pretty sure bet that Egyptian Hotels Ltd commissioned Burger to do its booklet then, pleased with the results, put out some of the paintings as cards. Here are the pages in full:
Filed under Art and artists, Memorabilia
We reproduced the postcard above in Grand Hotels of Egypt. It shows Cairo’s Opera Square seen from one of the terraces of the Continental-Savoy. It dates, I’m guessing, judging from the cars, from some time in the 1930s. Over on the far left is the old Khedivial Opera House, where Verdi’s opera Aida had its world premiere on 24 December 1871, with costumes and accessories designed by Egypt’s Director of Antiquities Auguste Mariette. (Just two months short of the opera’s centenary, on 28 October 1971, the opera house was completely destroyed by a fire.) It’s a lovely little painting, interesting because artists of the time rarely painted the modern city, saving their canvases instead for more picturesque (ie saleable) subjects like ancient temples and medieval mosques. The painter in this case was the Swiss Willy Friedrich Burger (1882-1964), a graphic artist of some talent, responsible for numerous beautiful posters advertising the attractions of his homeland, such as the one below, which sell for a fortune these days at auction.
It was only after Grand Hotels had gone to print that I discovered the Continental-Savoy wasn’t the only hotel Burger painted and that it was, in fact, part of a set. I now have four more Burger cards and they are all equally lovely. All employ the same dusky, Cairo-sunset palette of pinks and purples. The Semiramis card (top one, below) is the only representation I’ve ever seen of that old hotel’s Nile terrace. The really intriguing card though is the one below it, which unlike the others (the third card shows the Moorish Hall at Shepheard’s, the bottom the pool at the Grand Hotel Helwan) is not a Cairo hotel. It is the view of the Dormition Abbey at Mount Zion from the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Why include a Jerusalem hotel in a set of postcards showing Cairo hotels? Because the postcards were put out by Egyptian Hotels Ltd, owned by Charles Baehler, which in 1929 extended its activities into Palestine with the building of the King David. At what point the King David ceased being owned by an Egyptian company I don’t know, but it’s pretty unlikely this arrangement extended beyond 1948 and the creation of Israel. If anybody knows more, I’d love to hear from you.
Filed under Art and artists, Memorabilia
Grand Hotels of Egypt and On the Nile are published by the American University in Cairo Press.
Grand Hotels of Egypt is also available as an iBook from iTunes.
