Biography
Mohammed Seif al-Din Wanly was born into a wealthy family of Turkish origin on his father’s side, Ismaïl Bey Mohammed Wanly, and his mother, Ismat Hanem al-Daghistani, was from the Caucasus. He grew up in an intellectual Francophone environment with his four sisters and his younger brother, Adham. Private tutors educated them in their family's house, the Urfan Pacha Palace, in Muharram Bey, Alexandria. Seif worked as a public official at the customs archives of Alexandria and started painting with his brother, Adham. In 1929, Ottorino Bicchi (1878–1949), an Italian painter from Livorno, opened a studio in Alexandria. The Wanly brothers were among his first students. After Bicchi left Egypt in 1934, Seif and Adham established their studio in Alexandria the following year with their friends, the painter Ahmad Fahmi and the filmmaker Mohammed Bayoumi.
During the 1950s, the two brothers travelled regularly to Europe. They visited France, Italy, and Spain, where they sketched and painted numerous scenes of ballet, opera, theatre performances, bull fighting, and landscapes. When sculptor Ahmad Osman (1907–1970) established the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria (Kuliyat al-funun al Jamila fi al-Iskandariya) in 1957, Seif was appointed professor within the painting department. In 1959, the Ministry of Culture and National Guidance commissioned the Wanly brothers, along with many artists of their generation, such as Tahia Halim (1919–2003) and Hussein Bicar (1912–2002), to record the architectural heritage of Nubia before its flooding due to the construction of the High Dam in Aswan. The same year, when his brother Adham passed away, Seif lived through a difficult period, which was reflected in his work. At the age of 68, he married the Egyptian painter Ehsan Mokhtar. He died in 1979 in Stockholm, where he was preparing an exhibition of his Scandinavian landscapes.
The Wanly brothers were very close in both their personal and professional lives. They inspired one another and developed a similar style. Seif only used his first name to sign his paintings, while his brother, Adham, signed them as Wanly or E. Wanly (Edham Wanly). Together, they introduced modern pictorial trends in Alexandria and were among the first to depict international subjects, breaking away from the folklorist style of their contemporaries.
Seif was a prolific artist who produced over a thousand paintings, drawings, and sketches. His early works recall the light and gentle strokes of his Italian professor, Ottorino Bicchi, who was closely associated with the plein-air Italian Macchiaioli painters and the École de Barbizon. Later in his career, Seif used larger surfaces of bold colours and exercised greater freedom in his compositions, bringing him closer to Fauvism.
Seif was fascinated by the performance arts and depicted scenes of circus, ballet, opera, music concerts, bullfighting, and all types of sports, including horse races. He represented the life of the performers on stage and backstage by expressing their vivid and dynamic movements. His fascination with performance arts also led him to design several sets for theatre and opera productions in Egypt. He painted numerous views of traditional Nubian villages before they were flooded, as well as many landscapes of Egypt and the countries he visited, including Spain, France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Poland, and Russia. Seif is also the author of a series of self-portraits that reflect his sense of humour and derision. Following the death of his brother, Adham, which profoundly affected him, he introduced a darker palette of colours and shades in his paintings. His works can be seen at the Seif and Adham Wanly Museum hosted in the villa of the Mahmoud Saïd Museum in Alexandria, the Museum of Fine Arts in Alexandria, the Museum of Egyptian Modern Art in Cairo, the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah, The Dalloul Art Foundation in Beirut, as well as in numerous private collections around the world.
