FDA-D.336-2010
Parts
Object number
FDA-D.336-2010
Object type
Identification
Title
In a Native Market, Cairo
Pilkington
Pilkington
Title Type
assigned by cataloguer
collection
collection
Comments
Lewis lived in Cairo for ten years. He arrived in 1841, after four years spent travelling around Italy and the Mediterranean, and did not return to England until 1851. Little is known of the time he spent in Egypt, although Thackeray's 'Notes of Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo' recounts the author's visit to him in 1844. Thackeray found Lewis 'adopted himself, outwardly to the Oriental Life. When he goes abroad he rides a grey horse with red housings and has two servants to walk beside him. He wears a very handsome grave costume of dark blue, consisting of an embroidered jacket and gaiters, and a pair of trowsers [sic] which would make a set of dresses for a English family'. Like Lewis, Thackeray could not help but be struck with street life of the city; 'I never saw such a variety of architecture, of life, of picturesqueness, of brilliant colour, and light and shade. There is a picture in every street, and at every bazaar stall'. Even though Lewis seemed to have 'gone native', there was no lack of motive in his choice of subjects. In drawing this ramshackle street, and the stallholders sitting passively, seeming to have [nothing] better to do than observe the draughtsman at work, Lewis perhaps set out to recorded a stereotype of Eastern indolence, the antithesis of modern commercial London, where he expected to exhibit his finished pictures.
Other number
Pi 122
Description
Dimensions
height (actual size): 375mm
width (actual size): 543mm
width (actual size): 543mm
Materials & techniques note
Pencil and watercolour heightened with white on buff paper
Production
Person
Lewis, John Frederick, 1804 - 1876 (Artist)
History and association
Object history note
Exhibited: A Genius for Watercolour, Christie’s 2003, no. 61.
