In Seif Wanly’s Nocturne, there is a whimsical reflection on the everyday; a driver has fallen asleep in his horse-drawn taxi cart is rendered in bright colours with geometric elements, the overall scene recalls a Fauvist style of painting. The vivid use of colour with varying blocks of greens and blues segments the tranquil scene through an emphasis on the translucent quality of light. Painted just after the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, this quiet scene of a driver without a customer signals the vulnerability of the aristocracy, to which Wanly belonged, under Egypt’s new leadership.

Growing up in Alexandria, Seif and his younger brother and artist Adham, hailed from an aristocratic family of Turkish origin and lived among a Francophone and international exile community of literary figures that included Lawrence Durrell, C.P. Cavafy, and various Italian and other European artists and writers. In the 1930s, Seif and Adham founded a studio in Alexandria. He frequently traveled to Europe attending and sketching ballets, operas and theatre scenes. By 1957 Wanly was appointed professor of art at the new Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria and was among a large group of artists sponsored by the Egyptian government to document the construction of the Aswan High Dam.

Throughout his travels and experience in Europe, and visits to Upper Egypt, Wanly represented an elite cosmopolitan and Alexandrian perspective. His paintings are included at the Seif and Adham Wanly Museum in the villa of the Mahmoud Saïd Museum in Alexandria and other regional art collections.