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Al-Ahram Weekly 31 August - 6 September 2000 Issue No. 497 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 31 August - 6 September 2000 Issue No. 497
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Being Sabry Ragheb's pupil for almost as long as I can remember makes writing about him a complex endeavour. There is, of course, plenty of room for bias since for me writing about him involves putting my whole life on paper and turning it into a history of sorts. But if having Sabry Ragheb as a mentor and then losing him represent landmarks in shaping my own life, they are equally important staging posts in the history of 20th century Egyptian art. For Sabry Ragheb was undoubtedly one of the few painters among his generation who could compare not only with his contemporaries abroad but with the masters of an earlier generation, a fact amply displayed by his inclusion in last month's exhibition of portraits at the Gezira Art Centre, where his paintings were hung alongside works by Ingres, Renoir, Degas and Manet, among others.
Professor Sabry -- as an intimate of my father, and as my own art teacher -- has always been a part of my life, a life that was in a great many ways shaped by his presence. As a teacher he led me, a child, slowly but surely, one step at a time, with great love for the small artist in me and with greater passion for art in him, giving me the most precious thing he had.
I was at primary school when my father took me to his studio for the first time. On that day he gave me a set of pastels and that is how it all started. I was a little girl and he the great master. My father used to drop me off at his studio in the morning and pick me up later in the afternoon, when he had finished his work. At first I did not like the way Professor Sabry used to praise everything I drew. I was frustrated and asked my father: "Why should I go again if everything I do is so good?" But as the master felt my passion for art, many things changed. He ceased to be the kindly teacher forever complimenting his student. And the older I grew, the more serious he became, criticising and pointing out the shortcomings of my work.
Behind Sabry Ragheb's childlike smile lay a vigorous character, at times despotic, and always multi-faceted. He had travelled extensively in Europe, had studied for several years at the Scula Libra Del Nudo in Italy, and was a great devotee of European classical music. He maintained a wide range of social acquaintances, including scholars and public figures. In an article published in Shell magazine some years ago he recalled that he had felt rejected at times precisely because of his distinctive talent, and it is certainly true that Ragheb maintained a complicated artistic life. He was, nonetheless, one of very few Egyptian artists to make a living from his work.
Sabry Ragheb was taught by Ahmed Sabry and Youssef Kamel. Although greatly influenced by Ahmed Sabry in the early stages of his career, he carried the portrait much further than his teacher and stamped it with his own character. He saw his work as synthesising a number of artistic schools and trends. Yet however sophisticated the viewer, Ragheb always believed that art required no verbal explanations, and could be appreciated directly, through the senses and in the heart.
Ragheb was far from verbose. He used to tell me to "look a lot and paint a little... you have to draw a line that summarises many others but speaks about them..."
Sabry's portraits transcend the spirit of his sitters: if a model or a person did not communicate any feeling he could not paint them. Yet he had a great democracy of the spirit and would embrace ordinary people alongside the celebrated, adding the same sparkling touches of light to both. There was no darkness in even the darkest areas of his paintings, only warm lights that glitter with such a beauty that touches the soul. He used to tell me colours must be placed between the light and the shade.
He had an exquisite eye in framing his choosen images. It is a magical exercise in addition and subtraction, and one that changes the viewers' perception of the world.
When he picked up the brush I would sit beside him and look in amazement as the colours impressed themselves on my conscious mind. It was as if he was caught up by some celestial power. Every sound ceased except the sound of music, and his fingers seemed to dance with the brush held aloft before applying his ever glittering patches of light. Roses seemed to dance and sing with him and the simplest and most ordinary people were transformed by his brush into the most noble of men and women.
I loved the eternal roses of his still lifes and knew my father as a young man through his brush. He taught me to see the world around me in its different, real colours.
"When will you grow up and see that this black is really red?" he once asked me. And I can still hear his voice, resonating in the small studio in Heliopolis, sometimes praising, sometimes hectoring, still hear his laughter, day in day out, year after year, offering honesty and love at a time when such things are most necessary.
"What on earth are you painting? Is that a flower? I want to see the air that surrounds it," he said of my first, tentative attempt to depict a flower he had given me to paint.
Likewise, when I was learning anatomy and painting nude models I would hear him calmly ask: "But don't you see my dear, if she gets up she would go through the ceiling?"
I laughed a lot and loved him a lot more. And in the midst of my astonishment at the peculiar phrasing of his remarks I learned about things I had never even dreamed of before.
Though his humour was irrespressible Sabry Ragheb was the most serious of teachers. Unnecessary delays, lack of punctuality, were never allowed. We started work at 10 am, worked through to 1 pm when he would have his lunch and then go to sleep for a couple of hours, only to return to work from 6 till 9 pm.
Many times I returned home satisfied at the end of a working day because he thought that my painting was quite "out of this world". Returning the next day I would be astonished to hear him say: "Go my dear and scrape this painting with the knife, it is too awful."
The older I became, the more I would be told to scrape my work of the previous day. It was in this manner that I found myself pushed more and more. The real artist, he would tell me, never gets bored or tired.
"We will work two years in pencil," he would say whenever he suspected me of a lack of seriousness, knowing all too well my love of colour.
I very much enjoyed travelling with him in Europe, especially to Paris where he would guide me around the museums teaching me much more than mere technique. He taught me how to look at painting, and to see it. We walked and walked, and when he became completely exhausted would promise this was the last time he would travel with me. And invariably, sometime later, we would laugh together at his breaking the promise yet again.
No model was available when the time came to paint a portrait, so he posed for me. Getting tired quickly he would say: "Finish, this is very boring, this is what I do to people." In such circumstances I completed my first portrait of my teacher.
I picture him, lighting his pipe against medical advice and all our supplications, holding his favourite cat tenderly, smiling like a child. The walls are covered with the paintings at which I never tired of looking, and with the old clocks that he loved to hear chiming together, as if he was eternally expecting something or someone.
I knew him as a teacher, as a compassionate guide patiently leading me through my years of discipleship, and I knew him as a great master when he introduced me to the public for the first time in his own show and in the papers. And all this is to say only a little about Sabry Ragheb. As an artist I was privileged to be his pupil, and I shall remain forever grateful that it was he who acted as my mentor.
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