Connections (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-05-26 - 2011-09-11)Lure of the East - British Orientalist Painting (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-02-07 - 2008-04-28)Lure of the East - British Orientalist Painting (Tate Britain, 2008-06-04 - 2008-08-31)Lure of the East - British Orientalist Painting (Pera Museum, 2008-09-26 - 2009-01-11)Lure of the East - British Orientalist Painting (Sharjah Art Museum, 2009-02-18 - 2009-04-30)Edward Lear and the Art of Travel (Yale Center for British Art, 2000-09-20 - 2001-01-14)
Publications:
Painting in England 1700-1850 : collection of Mr. & Mrs. Paul Mellon : Exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, , , Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, 1963, v.1: p. 207, no. 442, ND466 V57 v.1-2 (YCBA)The lure of the east : British Orientalist painting: wall labels, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2008, p. [91], V 2577 (YCBA) V 2577Scott Wilcox, Edward Lear and the art of travel, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2000, pp. 34, 164, no. 185, NJ18 L455 W55 2000 (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
During his residency in Egypt from 1840 to 1851, Lewis made several excursions to Upper Egypt. This drawing was probably made in 1850, when he traveled up the Nile to visit Edfou, Luxor, and the cataracts at Assouan. Lewis depicts the Ramesseum, the mortuary temple of Ramesses II and a favorite subject among contemporary artists and photographers. Its huge statues and vast proportions had long been known to travelers, but it was best known in Lewis’s time as the site of the statue immortalized in Shelley’s poem, Ozymandias. Unlike David Roberts, who also drew this temple, Lewis shows little interest in recording its hieroglyphic inscriptions, employing the monument instead as the backdrop to a subtle narrative. The donkey and tent are not meant for the two Arab men but for unseen visitors to the temple. The passive expressions and postures of this little group suggest that they have become accustomed to waiting for dawdling European tourists, who were streaming into Egypt in 1850 in ever growing numbers. Gallery label for Lure of the East - British Orientalist Painting (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-02-07 - 2008-04-28)