David Roberts, R.A.
Seated Tribesmen, Petra
Auction Closed
April 29, 03:51 PM GMT
Estimate
5,000 - 7,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
David Roberts, R.A.
(Edinburgh 1796 - 1864 London)
Seated Tribesmen, Petra
Watercolour over traces of pencil, heightened with bodycolour;
signed and indistinctly inscribed lower right: David Roberts R.A PETRA, inscribed lower left, possibly in a different hand: Bshara - an arab of the tribe of The Benisaid
164 by 227 mm.
On the Art Market in Accrington or Blackburn, United Kingdom, circa 1916;
sale, London, Bonham's, 15 March 1995, lot 98, bt Spink on behalf of the parents of the present owners.
London, Spink's, Visions of the Orient, 1995, no. 34;
Oxford, The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, on long-term loan, 2015 - 2021
This spirited ad vivum study shows a group of tribesmen smoking pipes and conversing. According to the inscriptions it was drawn at Petra and one of the figures, perhaps the man on the left, is Besharah, who was part of the group of Benisaid tribesmen who accompanied Roberts and his party between Cairo and Hebron (see lot 301 for further information on the Benisaid).
The sketch is related to the watercolour Petra, Conference at Wady Moosa (Private Collection) and to the lithograph of the same title.1 The two figures smoking also appear a lithograph entitled: St Jean d’Acre from the Land.2
1. The Holy Land, London 1843, vol. III, pl. 101
2. The Holy Land, London 1843, vol. II, pl. 65
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