William James Muller

This watercolour is well preserved. The colours remain largely fresh and bold. At the extreme edges of the sheet there is some minor discolouration and in the foreground to the right of centre there may be a small area of pigment loss.
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Muller executed this atmospheric work in November 1843 during his ground-breaking tour of Asia Minor in the company of the archaeologist Sir Charles Fellows. By the 1^st November the party had reached Xanthus, the capital of Lycia and they remained in that region for three months. Pinara is one of Lycia’s most spectacular ancient cites and lies approximately twenty miles up the Xanthus Valley.

Muller was to return from Lycia with ‘one or two hundred drawings,¹ which were widely recognised as the finest achievement of his career.

^{1. N. Solly, Memoir of the Life of William Müller, London 1875, p. 200}