David Roberts R.A. 1796-1864

Roberts left England for Alexandria on 21st August 1838 and there he begun his eleven month journey around Egypt and the Holy Land. Whilst he was there he filled three sketchbooks and made over 272 drawings and, as a result, this period has been described as ‘the great central episode of his artistic life’ (see James Ballantine, The Life of David Roberts, 1866, p.231).

Roberts left Egypt for Jerusalem on 7th February 1839. The journey was far more difficult that Roberts had expected and by the 16th February three of the camels had died on the road. On the tenth day, however, Mount Sinai came into view and Roberts and his party stopped to rest on the plain. On the 18th February they reached the Convent of St Catherine where they spent four nights and managed to climb to the tops of Mount Sinai and Mount Horeb, the mountain of God, of Moses and the Law. There, Roberts found time to make several studies including the present work, before leaving on the 22nd for Akaba.

Roberts returned to London in July 1839 and soon set to work on a series of finished watercolours based on his sketches which were published as lithographs between 1842 and 1849. In 1840 he exhibited his on-the-spot drawings in London, Edinburgh and elsewhere in order to encourage subscribers and they were very well received. Whilst Roberts was in Edinburgh a dinner was held in his honour and Lord Cockburn eloquently praised his achievements, revealing that he had ‘explored that patriarchal land; he searched its inmost recesses, and returned to his native country laden with the richest treasures, after having completed the finest pilgrimage of art which has ever perhaps been performed by a single man’ (see Briony Llewellyn, David Roberts, 1986, p.69)