Sun Dappled Entrance, Egypt, Eric Pape (1870–1938)

Pape studied in San Francisco, Paris, and Germany before spending two years in Egypt beginning in 1891. Guided by a local, Pape spent nine months adventuring by camel through Egypt, even camping one night on the Great Pyramid of Giza, tethered to the pyramid’s sloping surface. Rather than depicting such ancient marvels, however, Sun Dappled Entrance features a wall consisting of alternating rows of white and red stone. This stone-laying technique, so prominent in Islamic architecture, is termed ablaq. The technique is typical of Mamluk period (1250–1517) building, and examples of it can be seen throughout Cairo, where Pape lived and worked.

Pape demonstrates an aesthetic appreciation for this locale, as seen in his attention to the transient play of light on the hard stone of the Islamic edifice. This contrasts with the orientalizing tendencies of his European contemporaries, who emphasized the “strange” foreigness of Egypt’s places and people over the formal possibilites of its landscape