Near Manqabad on the Nile, Egypt

Edward Lear (1812-1888)
Near Manqabad on the Nile, Egypt

Inscribed lower left: 5.20 Sunset Jany 8. 1867 (near Mankabat), lower right: clouds lilac fluffy - goldy towards horizon. Gold fluffy (107) and extensively inscribed with notes
Pen and brown ink and watercolour over pencil
12.4 by 19 cm., 4 ¾ by 7 ½ in.

Provenance:
With P. & D. Colnaghi, 14 Old Bond St, London;
The Estate of Mary Ann Streeter, Boston, USA

This dates from Lear's third trip to Egypt in the winter of 1866-7. He left Cairo with servant Giorgio and they met Lear's Canadian cousin Archie Jones at Luxor. Manqabad was a small town and military station on the banks of the Nile near Asyut.

They reached the southernmost point of their journey at Abu Seer on 4th February. At the end of his journey, he wrote in his diary on 25th February: `In no place - it seems to me, can the variety & simplicity of colors be so well studied as in Egypt; in no place are the various beauties of shadow more observable, or more interminably numerous.'