David Roberts, R.A.

Sir Reginald Cathcart of Carleton, 6^th Bt (1838-1916),

by descent to the present owner

Lithographed:

by Louis Haghe (1806-1885) for Robert’s The Holy Land, Syria, Iduma, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia, volume III, 1849 (published by F.G. Moon)  

In this watercolour, which is dated 1849 and was lithographed for the iconic Holy Land series in that same year, Roberts stands before a grand town house in Cairo. Above a richly decorated doorway is a mashrabiyya, its finely worked lattice panels providing ventilation for those within, as well as allowing the house’s occupants to look out, unobserved, on the street below. To the left of the door, a man dressed in ochre and white clothes and a red tarboush hat, crouches in the heat of day, while to the right, a group of figures, including a woman, smoke hookahs and talk quietly in the shade. In the centre, two men appear to be keeping guard, the figure on the left is particularly heavily armed, with a rifle in hand and pistols, daggers and a yataghan sword tucked into his red sash.

Roberts spent over two months living in Cairo in late 1838 and early 1839, noting in his journal that he was ‘bewildered with the extraordinary, picturesque streets and buildings of this most wonderful of all cities’.¹

^1.J. Ballantine, The Life of David Roberts, R.A, Edinburgh 1886, p. 106