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292 Marsha Morton in Cairo as a painter of the Egyptian Fellahin and Beduin, and at a period of intense financial need. The result of the commission, Markt in Cairo (originally titled Egyp- tischer Jahrmarkt) (fig.  1), on which Müller struggled for three years, is today regarded as his masterpiece. It established many of his future themes (including camel and sugar cane markets) and initiated an important transition in his creative process from studio to plein air painting that emphasized the sensory materiality of physical activity. One might justifiably ask, however, why Eitelberger would so value and doggedly pursue an artist of Orientalist themes, in which he had expressed minimal interest, and naturalistic techniques, which he had fiercely denounced earlier in opposition to Ferdinand Wald- müller’s teaching methods. This essay will trace the written correspondence between the two men and argue that, notwithstanding the Egyptian settings, Müller’s understanding of genre paintings as cultural documents as well as his opinions on art and pedagogy complemented many of Eitelberger’s deeply held convictions. Both men were the product of middle-class Vi- ennese liberalism with its advocacy of science, empirical facts, global trade, and cultural relativism. Müller’s object-based eyewitness descriptions of people and places were con- sistent with the use of scientific materialist procedures and primary source documents for which the Vienna School of Art History became famous. His paintings demonstrate a mastery of academic anatomical form and composition fused with the new natural- Fig. 1 : Leopold Carl Müller, Markt in Cairo, 1875–1878, oil on canvas, Vienna, Belvedere. Open Access © 2019 by BÖHLAU VERLAG GMBH & CO.KG, WIEN