Edward Lear, View of Cairo, with the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx in the distance.
Inscribed and dated ‘Cairo / 9. Jany . 1849.’ (lower left), further inscribed, dated and numbered ‘Cairo. Jany 9. 1849. 2’ (lower right), and further variously inscribed with the artist’s notes throughout. Pencil, pen and brown ink and watercolour, heightened with touches of bodycolour, on paper. 6 ¾ x 20 in. (17.2 x 50.9 cm.)
Lear first visited Egypt in January 1849, writing to Fortescue ‘I strongly long to go to Egypt for the next winter as ever is, if so be as I can find a sufficiency of tin to allow of my passing 4 or 5 months there. I am quite crazy about Memphis & On & Isis & crocodiles and ophthalmia & nubians, and simooms & sorcerers & sphingidoe. Seriously the contemplation of Egypt must fill the mind, the artistic mind I mean, with great food for the rumination of long years.’ (Lady Strachey, The Letters of Edward Lear, London, 1907, pp. 8-9.)
His first visit was brief and he saw only Cairo and the Pyramids, before travelling on in early February to Sinai and Palestine by camel, with his friend John Cross.
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