The Palace Guard 

Rudolf Ernst completed this oil on canvas painting titled 'The Palace Guard' sometime between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The painting depicts a guard standing with a tiger on a leash inside what appears to be an Indian palace. What are the politics of this imagery? Ernst was an Austrian painter, printmaker and ceramicist who specialized in orientalist scenes, which grew in popularity as France and England colonized parts of the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. Orientalist paintings were often fantasized versions of life in these colonies that reinforced stereotypes about their people and cultures. Ernst never actually visited the Middle East himself, yet his paintings catered to European fantasies about the so-called "Orient." To truly understand this painting, we would need to research the history of orientalism and study the visual codes that Ernst and his contemporaries employed. By looking into the history of this painting, we begin to understand that the meaning of art is contingent on social and institutional contexts.