Despite its obvious quality, the present portrait of a handsome North African sitter has so far resisted a definitive attribution. Painted around 1880 in the Beaux-Arts style, it is most likely the hand of an Austrian or French artist in thrall to the likes of Gérôme, Deutsch, or Müller.

The staging and scale of the composition suggest a studio portrait, painted at home in Europe rather than a sketch done in the souks of Cairo. With the prolific interest in Orientalist art during the mid to late nineteenth century, it was common for North African models to tour the studios and ateliers of Europe, sitting for noted artists and students alike.

The model here sits in profile, looking slightly over his left shoulder, with a confident upward tilt of the jaw. He is clothed in an eclectic range of garments with a distinctly Ottoman-Egyptian style. He wears a crisp white turban wrapped around a red fez, or tarbush, paired with a Kashmiri-style pashmina scarf, featuring an intricate buta motif in madder red and ochre. These imported scarves were a luxury among the merchant classes of Cairo. In contrast, he also wears a heavy, dark brown burnous - a traditional cloak of the Maghreb region. Such a range of garments is consistent with a studio portrait staged using props rather than an authentic assemblage. This was a common practice among Orientalist painters enabling them to showcase their technical mastery of diverse fabrics and textures.