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Creator:
John Frederick Lewis, 1804–1876
Title:

A Frank Encampment in the Desert of Mount Sinai. 1842 - The Convent of St. Catherine in the Distance

Date:
1856
Medium:
Watercolor, gouache and graphite on slightly textured, beige wove paper mounted on board
Dimensions:
Sheet: 26 1/4 x 53 1/2 inches (66.7 x 135.9 cm), Frame: 32 x 59 x 2 3/4 inches (81.3 x 149.9 x 7 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:

Signed in pen and brown ink, lower right: "J.F. Lewis 1856"

Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.143
Classification:
Drawings & Watercolors
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
birds | books | camels (mammals) | carpets | convent | desert | dogs (animals) | ducks | expedition | food | furniture | gazelle | genre subject | hunting | interpreter | map | men | monastery | newspaper | pilgrimage | rabbits | reclining | tea | tents | turbans | umbrella
Associated Places:
Africa | Egypt | Frontier | Janub Sina' | Mont-Sinaï | Saint Catherine's Monastery of Mount Sinai
Associated People:
Sheikh Hussein of Gebel
Stewart, Frederick William Robert, Viscount Castlereagh, later fourth Marquess of Londonderry (1805–1872)
Access:
Accessible by appointment in the Study Room [Request]
Note: The Study Room is open by appointment. Please visit the Study Room page on our website for more details.
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:10761
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John Frederick Lewis spent a decade in Egypt, where he created watercolor studies such as Sheik Hussein of Gebel Tor and His Son, painted in 1842–43, during the artist’s visit to the sheik’s territory near Mount Sinai. Fifteen years later, when Lewis had returned to Britain, he painted this elaborate watercolor in which the sheik plays a central role, shown as guide to the British aristocrat Frederick William Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, who commissioned the portrait of their interaction. The painting is richly detailed in its depiction of Egyptian life and landscape in the sacred area around Mount Sinai, but it also tells the viewer much about the idealized life of the well-off European traveler to Egypt. Viscount Castlereagh lounges in an elaborate tent, surrounded by English books, newspapers, and maps. Like the artist, Castlereagh adopted Eastern dress while traveling in Egypt. However, the sheik’s upright posture and commanding presence and Castlereagh’s languorousness reverse the terms of traditional paintings of encounters between East and West. It is not surprising that Castlereagh rejected the watercolor he had originally commissioned.

Gallery label for the Critique of Reason: Romantic Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26)


In 1855 Lewis was elected president of the Old Watercolour Society, and the following year this work was the centerpiece of the Society's exhibition. It was praised in superlative terms by the critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), who devoted several pages to it in his review of the exhibition and declared "I have no hesitation in ranking it among the most wonderful pictures in the world." Ruskin was particularly impressed by Lewis's facture, urging the viewer to appreciate the painstaking attention to detail: "Let him examine, for instance, with a good lens the eyes of the camels and he will find there is as much painting beneath their drooping fringes as would, with most painters, be thought enough for the whole head." The watercolor depicts Frederick William Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, later fourth Marquess of Londonderry (1805-1872), who made an expedition through the Sinai Desert in 1842 and commissioned a portrait of his entourage from Lewis. Other figures include the group's guide, Sheikh Hussein of Gebel Tor, who stands in the center before the reclining Castlereagh, and Mahmoud, the dragoman, or interpreter. The dog has been identified as Dusty, whose name, along with those of other members of the group, was carved into the exterior of the temple at Abu Simbel, a site captured by Edward Lear in images displayed nearby.

Gallery label for Connections (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-05-26 - 2011-09-11)
After a decade of living and working in Cairo, John Frederick Lewis returned to London in 1851. He established himself as the preeminent interpreter of life in the East, painting genre scenes that played upon Western notions of Oriental luxury set amid bazaars, harems, desert landscapes, and mosques. He rendered each of these subjects in a style characterized by one contemporary critic as "marvelous in minute manipulation" (Art Journal, 1876, p. 176). Lewis's sharp style blurs boundaries in this meeting between East and West. A local term for anything European, the Frank of the Frank Encampment was Frederick William Robert Stewert, Viscount Castelreagh, author of Diary of a Journey to Damascus (1847). He left Cairo for Damascus in May 1842 and spent five days at Mount Sinai. Castelreagh commissioned a portrait of his party from Lewis, and although Lewis sketched some of the sitters before their departure (see Schoenherr, 2005, p. 107), it is unclear if A Frank Encampment was the picture commissioned in 1842 or if Lewis even observed the group at Mount Sinai. Castelreagh wears native dress and adopts a languid posture, recumbent amid a bevy of accoutrements-some "Eastern," such as the hookah, some "Western," such as tea, books, furniture, newspapers, and even a bottle of Harvey's Sherry. In contrast, the local sheik Hussein of Gebel Tor (the Arabic name for Mount Sinai) stands erect, his serious, and perhaps dubious, expression directed towards the bloated lord whom he has agreed to guide across the desert. The monumental Monastery of St. Catherine in the distance serves as an appropriate backdrop for this encounter, a site of Christian pilgrimage and an active mosque. Emily Weeks observed in this work the "fragility of borders and the falseness of boundaries" that challenge the binary of East and West (Weeks, 2004, p. 240). Lewis exhibited the work at the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1856. When John Ruskin visited the exhibition, he singled out this work for his highest praise, "I have no hesitation in ranking it among the most wonderful pictures in the world" (Ruskin, Works, vol. 14, p. 73).

Morna O'Neill

John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, p. 295, no. 111, pl. 111, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)

The Critique of Reason : Romantic Art, 1760–1860 (Yale University Art Gallery, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Connections (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-05-26 - 2011-09-11) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Lure of the East - British Orientalist Painting (Tate Britain, 2008-06-04 - 2008-08-31) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Royal Academy of Arts, 2007-10-20 - 2008-01-27) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Paul Mellon's Legacy : A Passion for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Edward Lear and the Art of Travel (Yale Center for British Art, 2000-09-20 - 2001-01-14) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Ruskin - Past: Present: Future (Yale Center for British Art, 2000-01-20 - 2000-02-27) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

The Orientalists - Delacroix to Matisse - The Allure of North Africa and the Near East (National Gallery of Art, 1984-07-10 - 1984-10-28) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Works of Splendor and Imagination - The Exhibition Watercolor 1770-1870 (Yale Center for British Art, 1981-09-16 - 1981-11-22) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Acquisitions : The First Decade 1977-1986, Yale Center for British Art , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1986, p. 27, no. 102, N590.2 A7 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, p. 295, no. 111, pl. 111, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Catalogue of the art treasures of the United Kingdom : collected at Manchester in 1857., Bradbury and Evans, London, p. 196, no. 638, N5056 .M35 M25 1857 (YCBA) Also available in Hathitrust [YCBA]

Julie F. Codell, Transculturation in British art, 1770-1930, Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, Surrey, England ; Burlington, VT, 2012, pp. 64-68, 70, 71, color pl. 2, N6764 .T73 2012 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Imogen Hart, Imogen Hart on John Frederick Lewis's A Frank Encampment, , August 8, 2011, 0 minutes 12 seconds, http://www.youtube.com/v/NbW8ioZxeys [Website]

Zeynep Inankur, The Poetics and politics of place, Ottoman Istanbul and British Orientalism , Pera Museum, distributed by University of Washington Press, Istanbul Seattle, WA, 2011, pp. 251-52, fig. 17.6, ND1460 E95 P647 2011 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Patrick Noon, A Princely Amateur, Paul Mellon and his Collection of British Drawings , Master Drawings, vol. 38, no. 3, Master Drawings Association, Inc., Fall, 2000, p. 343, fig.5, NC1 M37 (YCBA) Another copy available as item VF 2329 [YCBA]

Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 2, no. 111, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Richard Green Gallery Sales Catalogue: Sporting & British Paintings, Wednesday 12th November 2008, Richard Green Gallery, November 2008, p. 76, no. 24, DealerCat Richard Green Gallery [ORBIS]

Duncan Robinson, Acquisitions : The First Decade 1977 - 1986, , Burlington Magazine, vol. 128, October 1986, p. 27, no. 102, N1 B87 128:3 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

John Ruskin, The works of John Ruskin, vol. 1-39, George Allen, London, 1903-1912, p. 74 (v. 14), , PR5251 C66 1903 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Douglas E. Schoenherr, British drawings from the National Gallery of Canada, National Library of Canada, Ottowa, 2005, p. 107, no. 40, fig. 83-84, NC228 .N27 2005 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Nicholas Tromans, The lure of the East, British Orientalist painting , Tate Publishing, London, 2008, pp.53, 107-08, 118-19, 132-33, 215, fig. 101, N7429 .L87 2008 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Emily M. Weeks, Cultures crossed : John Frederick Lewis and the art of orientalism, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, New Haven, 2014, pp. 35-36, 128-150, 171 [n. 142], 211 [n. 3], 212 [ns. 5, 6, 7], 213 [n. 10] 214 [ns.27, 28, 29,] 215 [ns. 32, 33, 35, 36, 37], 216 pn. 41], 217 [ns. 52], 54, collr deail and figs. 97-107, NJ18.L5857 W437 2014 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Scott Wilcox, Edward Lear and the art of travel, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2000, pp. 166-7, no. 186, NJ18 L455 W55 2000 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Caroline Williams, John Frederick Lewis, "Reflections of Reality" , Muqarnas, vol. 18, Brill, 2001, pp. 230. 231, fig. 4, V 2575 (YCBA) Also available online : JSTOR. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1523309 [YCBA]


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