David Roberts, R.A.

Private Collection, Newark, Nottinghamshire, by 1939;

Private Collection, United Kingdom, from which acquired in 2005 by Agnew's on behalf of the parents of the present owners. 

Oxford, The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, on long-term loan, 2015 - 2021  

Roberts reached the Convent of Saint Saba, which is about eleven miles from Bethlehem, on the 3^rd of April 1839 and stayed for two days. He wrote in his journal: 'We arrived in sight of two solitary towers overhanging the Convent of St Saba. It is situated on the brink of a deep ravine at the foot of which flows a brook, so deep that the sun's rays even at noon scarcely penetrate it… The brotherhood is of the Greek persuasion and consists of about 35 monks who dress the same as those on Mount Sinai.’¹ 

The convent of Saint Saba (or Mar Saba) was built in 482 around a cave inhabited by St Sabbas (439-532), an early Christian hermit and native of Cappadocia. Like many monasteries in the East, it was built as a stronghold in the rocks and looks down on a succession of precipices. Below runs the river Kidron which flows into the Dead Sea. The convent was visited by many travelers in the nineteenth century when it was described as 'the most extraordinary building in Palestine... picturesque and singularly wild, especially in the pale moonlight, when the projecting cliffs and towers are tinged with the silver light, while the intervening spaces and the deep chasm below are shrouded in gloom.’² 

The present watercolour conveys much of the drama of the convent's location and the subject was later lithographed by Louis Haghe as part of The Holy Land series.³

^1. J. Ballantine, The Life of David Roberts, R.A., London 1866, p. 130 

^2. J. Murray, A Handbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine, London 1858, p. 204 

^3. The Holy Land, London 1843, vol. II, pl. 51 & London 1855, vol. II, pl. 51