A woman in a yellow skirt and white blouse lies on a divan. An oriel window opens behind her, revealing a view of a vast landscape with a palm tree. Above it is a row of five coloured stucco and glass windows; flowers and cypresses can be seen. On the back, the painting is labelled “Intérieur au Caire”.

The Swiss painter Rudolf Durheim (1811–1895) had travelled to Cairo in 1848 and probably remained there for several years. In these years he painted besides general views of Cairo and its buildings and landscapes, also the interior of the house of Sheikh al-ʿAbbasi al-Mahdi (IG_49, IG_60). The interior shown here, however, has not been identified.
Durheim gave the painting to his friend, the Swiss painter Albert Anker (1831–1910), at a unknown time. It belongs to the collection of the painter’s house in Ins. Compared to other works of Durheim, it remains sketchy, made with quick brushstrokes. This suggests that the undated work was created in situ in Cairo.
The stucco and glass windows take a prominent place in the painting, and received the most detailed elaboration. Similar rows of windows above a (mashrabiyya) oriel window has been painted by Theodor Zeerleder in 1848 (IG_469), by John Frederick Lewis in 1850 (‘The Hhareem’, Nippon Life Insurance Company, Osaka, Japan), by Frank Dillon in 1873–74 (IG_100, IG_101, IG_105) and by by Arthur Melville in 1881 (IG_93).