Signed and dated in brown paint, lower right: "J.F. Lewis. RA | 1876"
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1981.25.418
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:
animals | sky | camels (mammals) | dog (animal) | birds | swallows | ducks | resting | sleeping | poppies | travel | Egyptian | blue | Oriental | child | women | men | river | riverbank | flowers (plants) | jar | basket | boat | landscape | riverbank
Associated Places:
Egypt | Nil, Nahr an-
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
Connections (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-05-26 - 2011-09-11)Imaginative Geographies (Yale Center for British Art, 2006-02-01 - 2006-08-18)Oil on Water - Oil Sketches by British Watercolorists (Yale Center for British Art, 1986-08-26 - 1986-11-09)
Publications:
Julie F. Codell, Victorian Artists' autograph replicas : auras, aesthetics, patronage and the art market, Taylor & Francis, Ltd, New York, pp. 286-287, ND467 .V515 2020 (YCBA)Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 146-147, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA)Malcolm Cormack, Oil on water : oil sketches by British watercolorists, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1986, pp. 42-43, fig. 39, ND467 C67 (YCBA)The lure of the east : British Orientalist painting: wall labels, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2008, p. [88], V 2577 (YCBA) V 2577The lure of the East, British orientalist painting, 1830-1925 , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2008, p. 16, V 1879 (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
Although Middle Eastern scenes had been part of John Frederick Lewis’s repertoire since his return from Egypt in 1851, recent political events may have been a catalyst for painting and exhibiting this vivid and sensuous evocation of the Nile. In 1875, Isma’il Pasha, the Khedive (ruler) of Egypt, went bankrupt and was forced to sell his shares in the Suez Canal, an eleven-mile waterway linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea that had opened six years earlier. British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli purchased the shares without consulting Parliament, effectively ensuring British control over Egypt. Given his sympathetic attitude toward Egypt, Lewis likely disapproved of Britain’s aggressive imperial policy. In any case, his meticulous depiction of lush vegetation, birds, animals, and local people suggests a deep affection for Egypt. Painted in the year that Lewis died, and one of his last works, the picture can also be interpreted as a valedictory gesture. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016