Philae, Egypt
1854
Most people know Edward Lear for his silly poem 'The Owl and the Pussycat,' but he spent years traveling as a serious landscape painter. This 1854 sketch of Philae, Egypt, shows the Nile riverbank bathed in heat, with tiny figures and a donkey dwarfed by the vast, sandy landscape and distant ruins. The scribbled notes all over the bottom right aren't just messy handwriting—they are color reminders like 'light white' and 'grey cold' so he could finish the painting later. It’s a perfect snapshot of a Victorian artist trying to capture the blinding light of the Middle East.
- Technique
- watercolor and ink
- Material
- paper
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