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The two camel riders have reached the top of the rise. Below them, a sea of sand stretches to the horizon. The blazing sun bathes everything in a harsh light. Even the shadows under the bodies of the camels are bright grey. But the gazes of the riders and their camels are fixed on an imminent danger – the heavy clouds of a sandstorm rapidly approaching.

In 1914, Max Slevogt travelled to Egypt together with three friends. He took with him three sizes of canvases, already primed and stretched on frames, as well as his paints and boxes for transport. Slevogt painted this work not far from the Monastery of Saint Simeon near Aswan on the Nile. Just as for his other paintings on this trip, Slevogt worked plein air – painting out of doors, directly from the landscape. He captured the uniform desert in bright ochre and yellow tones, with some parts in thin glazes, and others in thick pastose layers. But the extreme character of nature first becomes evident in the contrast with the camel riders, their blue-black clothing rendered in areas of colour intensified by the expressive brushstroke. By setting the figures in a radically foreshortened perspective in the foreground, Slevogt highlights this vast expanse, entirely devoid of vegetation.

One of Slevogt’s friends travelling with him was journalist and cultural scholar Eduard Fuchs. In his diary of the journey, Fuchs noted the unusual conditions in which this work was painted:

“Picture of the desert painted in a constant breeze, at times strong. Everyone had to constantly hold on to the easel ...”

The desert wind has left its traces on the work, blowing innumerable tiny grains of sand into the paints. On his five-week trip from Alexandria to Cairo and then up the Nile to Aswan, Slevogt completed 21 paintings. He sold all but one of these to the Dresden art collections. Today, the collections still have 17 works from the series – a unique document of impressionist landscape painting. With the money from the sale, Slevogt was able to buy the Neukastel manor house on his parent-in-laws’ estate in the Palatinate region of Germany.