Painted in 1857, Interior of a Mosque at Cairo is probably a self-portrait of John Frederick Lewis, but since neither Lewis nor his contemporaries acknowledged that he painted himself ‘disguised’ in local costume, the assertion must remain speculative. The purpose of these pictures is debatable, but ‘it is possible that as well as demonstrating publicly his familiarity with and understanding of Egyptian culture and his unique ability to portray this for a British audience, they were also a private conceit to enable him to relive his oriental experience.’¹

The alternative title, The 'Asr, refers to the afternoon prayer in the mosque. It reflects the fact that during the decade that Lewis lived in Cairo from 1841–1851, he immersed himself in the customs and costumes of the Egyptian people and became intimately acquainted with the city. Lewis’s adoption of Egyptian clothes probably gave him the advantage of being accepted as part of the community and therefore able to witness private moments of Egyptian life and religious worship. The witty essayist, William Makepeace Thackeray, had visited Lewis in Cairo and in his colourful, tongue-in-cheek account, Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, published in 1846, had elaborately highlighted Lewis's luxurious Eastern lifestyle: ‘going about with a great beard and crooked sword, dressed up like an odious Turk’, investing his friend with an Arabian Nights-style glamour—‘a dreamy, hazy, lazy, tobaccofied life’. Lewis was the suave, urban ‘bey’, who wore ‘a very handsome grave costume of dark blue, consisting of an embroidered jacket and gaiters, and a pair of trousers, which would make a set of dresses for an English family’.²

By the late 1850s Lewis was well-established in Britain as the pre-eminent painter of Orientalist genre scenes. He had exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water-colours, where he became its President in November 1855 but had to relinquish his membership to be elected to the Royal Academy in 1858. In 1856 John Ruskin wrote a hurried letter to Lewis after seeing his watercolour Frank Encampment in the Desert of Mount Sinai: ‘Your picture is one of the wonders of the world. If it is in firm colour—it will one day be a thing that men will come from India to see, and will go back again, saying ‘I have seen Lewis’s encampment…’ I can’t tell you how glorious I think it. Are you sure of your material—if one of those bits of hair stroke fade—where are you? Why don’t you paint in oil only now?’³ Lewis heeded Ruskin’s advice and began to work more in oil, as Interior of a Mosque at Cairo, Afternoon Prayer attests—although he certainly did not abandon watercolour.

His ten years living in Cairo and the numerous sketches of Egyptian life he made there were invaluable to him back in London, as was his collection of Eastern costume and artefacts. These were used to construct the elaborate compositions for which he became famous and acclaimed—opulent interiors with richly dressed women and exteriors glittering in the sunlight depicting colourful bazaars, mosques or the sunlit desert. An albumen print by an unknown photographer depicts Lewis wearing garments acquired during his time in Egypt in the 1840s (fig. 1). This is the sole known print of this photograph, although another, probably taken at the same time and also known only from one print, shows Lewis wearing the same garb (Royal Watercolour Society, London). In both photographs Lewis appears to be wearing the same, or very similar, costume described by Thackeray and depicted in the present painting. It consists of dark blue voluminous trousers (şalvar), saltah jacket embroidered at the sleeve and the opening at the front worn over a white fringed shirt. The turban appears to be the same as the one in A Memlook Bey, Egypt, one of Lewis's five exhibits at the Royal Academy in 1869.⁴ Lewis wears the same costume in one of his best-known paintings, In the Bezestein, El Khan Khalil, Cairo, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1861 (fig. 2).⁵

 
¹ B. Llewellyn, ‘“Solitary Eagle”? The Public and Private Personas of John Frederick Lewis (1804–1876),’ in The Poetics and Politics of Place: Ottoman Istanbul and British Orientalism, Istanbul 2011, p. 173.

² W.M. Thackeray, Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, London 1846, pp. 378, 437 and 508.

³ Lewis 1978, p. 28.

⁴ Oil on panel, 35.5 x 24.7 cm. Private collection, sold in these rooms, 25 September 2012, lot 45.

⁵ Oil on panel, 66 x 53.5 cm. Private collection, sold in these rooms, 20 November 1996, lot 251.