Bartolomäus Vigh was born in the Slovakian town of Rimavská Sobota. In his youth he won a scholarship to the Budapest Academy of Art and began studying there under Laszlo Hegedus and Carlo Ferenczy. With the advent of the First World War he was enlisted into the Austro-Hungarian army, captured by the Russians and detained in Turkestan, then part of Imperial Russia. Despite his capture, this period inside the Russian Empire became one of great creativity for the artist as he painted both sights of the Russian military and the Turkestan landscape.

Presentation in Samarkand is one such work painted directly from life by Vigh while in Turkestan. The piece depicts the festivities of the traditional Tamash...