Biography
Marguerite Nakhla was born in Alexandria in 1908 in a devout Christian environment. Her father, Youssef, was an accountant, and her mother, Matilde, was a housewife. The latter belonged to an old and wealthy Coptic family, the Simaikas, and was related to Marcus Simaika, who founded al-Mathaf al-Qibti (the Coptic Museum) in Cairo (1908). Marguerite Nakhla went to French-speaking schools in Alexandria–the École élémentaire Notre Dame de Sion and l’institution française Girard (now known as École Girard).
Nakhla became one of the first female artists of Egyptian nationality to emerge during the first half of the 20th century. Indeed, the first identified women who were active in the Egyptian modern art scene were European immigrants, like the Italian Amelia Daforno Casonato (1878 –1969) or the Greek Thalia Flora-Karavia (1871 –1960), or belonged to the Ottoman aristocracy like Princess Samiha Hussein (1889 –1984). Cairo's École Égyptienne des Beaux-Arts (Madrassat al-Funun al-Jamila al-Misriyya) was inaugurated in 1908, the year Nakhla was born, but it was exclusively for male students until the early 1950s. Aspiring female artists were, therefore, instructed in private circles or abroad. Nakhla's trajectory is thus an example of how Egyptian women became artists by profession when local academic training was reserved for men.
She first trained in the studios of European artists established in her hometown. The start of her career in Egypt was promising, as she received a silver medal in 1931 at al-maʿrad al-ziraʿyi al-sinaʿyi (the Agricultural Industrial Exhibition) in Cairo and a gold medal in 1932 at the Exposition de L'Association des Amateurs d'art d'Alexandrie for decorative panels. In 1934, she travelled to Paris to enroll in the École des Beaux-Arts (1934 –1939) in the studio of the painter Fernand Sabatté (1874 –1940). She studied with the painter Henri Royer (1869 –1938) and the painter, engraver, and illustrator Georges d'Espagnat (1870 –1950). She also took classes at the École de dessin du 10 bis rue de Seine, then attached to the École nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs de Paris (formerly the École de dessin de la rue de Seine pour jeunes filles).
In 1948, she travelled again to the French capital on a mission initiated by the Egyptian ambassador in Paris, Ahmed Tharwat Bey. During another stay in Paris in 1951, she was initiated into the fresco technique at the Beaux-Arts, where she was allowed as a former student. Simultaneously, she actively visited exhibitions and attended lectures at the École du Louvre, among other places.
Next to her relationship with Paris, Marguerite Nakhla always contributed to the artistic life in Egypt, where she returned at the start of WWII. She was equally active in Cairo and Alexandria as a member of the Atelier d'Alexandrie, an association dedicated to promoting the arts and literary production through exhibitions, concerts, theatre plays, and conferences.
Marguerite Nakhla was also a pedagogue as one of the first teachers of the Maʿhad al-ʿali lil funun al-gamila lil moʿalimat (the Higher Institute of Fine Arts for Female Teachers), a state establishment founded in 1939 in Cairo. Initially intended to train Egyptian art teachers to replace the British women who fulfilled this role in public schools, the institute saw many of its former students like Sophie Habib Gorgi (1922 –), who was among the first-year group, and later Gazbia Sirry (1925––2021) and Menhat Helmy (1925–2004) become renowned artists. Kolliyiat al-tarbiya al-fanniya (the Faculty of Art Education) located today in the Zamalek neighborhood of Cairo, is the result of this institute's evolution and merging with other establishments.
In the hundreds of paintings and sketches she produced throughout her lifetime, Nakhla depicted daily life in the cities and countryside of France, Egypt, and elsewhere. She sketched and painted in situ, capturing the gestures and features of individuals in crowds and public places. Commentators of her time usually see the impact of her environment on Nakhla's production. For instance, the art critic Aimé Azar (1933 –1997) saw a prevalent greyish palette and nostalgic feeling in her Parisian pictures, while dazzling colours and a caustic look at reality characterise her paintings of Egypt. Her Parisian works comprise views of the French capital's streets, strollers in public gardens like the Jardin du Luxembourg, portraits, and, occasionally, café scenes. In 1949, she painted La Bourse de Paris (Paris Stock Exchange), responding to La Borsa – Le Caire (Cairo Stock Exchange) painted a year earlier (1948), showing the crowd of traders in the financial markets of the two capitals. There are sometimes humorous notes in Nakhla's works. For example, with Le Bain Turc (Hammam) [The Turkish Bath (Hammam)] (1947), the artist depicts a public bath with evocations of intense smell and sounds. Women of all ages and body shapes energetically soap themselves, ironically breaking with fantasised, mysterious, and sensual visions of the hammams in European Orientalist painting. In contrast with the rarity of hammam depictions by Egyptian artists, a large part of Nakhla's paintings of her own country focus on rural areas and their populations, engaging with recurring themes of modern painting in Egypt: peasants in the fields, harvest, and market scenes. Besides, religious scenes are a particularity of her work. Some show the Egyptian Coptic liturgy, like Mariage Copte (Coptic Wedding) (1945), while other paintings of churches and procession scenes stem from her travels to Lourdes and Jerusalem, where she also painted Jewish sites of interest and/or worship, like Le mur des Lamentations (the Wailing Wall) (1943). More notably, in 1959, she produced a cycle of painted panels entitled Les femmes dans la vie du Christ (Women in the Life of Christ) for Saint Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church on El Maraashly Street in Zamalek (Cairo). Gifted by the artist, the Saint Mark's Coptic Museum in Toronto, Canada, also holds a set of biblical scenes from the 1960s and 1970s painted in tempera in a style reminiscent of Coptic icons.
Nakhla was acclaimed during her lifetime. Her time in Paris was crowned with success, with three student prizes received at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1936, 1937, and 1939, as well as several exhibitions, including the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques where she won a bronze medal in painting in 1937 and an honourable mention in 1939 at the Salon des Artistes Français. She was part of the Égypte-France exhibition at the Pavillon de Marsan at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1949. She exhibited in Paris and Deauville in 1954, 1956, and 1960. From the 1940s, she organised several personal exhibitions in Egypt, and she was one of the artists representing Egypt at the Alexandria Biennale in 1955, 1957, 1961, and 1968.
