Best known for Ottoman Empire paintings of elaborately costumed merchants, guards or sentinels and pashas as well as a few portraits from his 1890 travels in Turkey, Rudolf Ernst was a leader of the second generation of the Orientalist movement and the leader of the movement in his native country of Austria. Initially the movement had been focused on life-changing political events such as the liberation of Greece and Napoleon's march through Algeria. The second generation of painters such as Ernst and his friend, Ludwig Deutsch, were more interested in daily life genre scenes or static figures 'keeping the peace'.

Because of his use of photography on his travels through Moorish Spain, Morocco, Tunis Constantinople and Egy...