ABOUT THE COVER IMAGE

David Roberts, The Temple of Dendera, Upper Egypt, 1841. Bristol Museum & Art Gallery

If you were to visit Egypt in the 19th century, you would have seen Egypt as experienced by the Scottish artist David Roberts (1796-1864). His watercolour paintings were extensively reproduced in the 20th century in many forms, particularly in Egypt in the form of post cards and calendars, so you could enjoy his representations of ancient Egyptian temples and tombs and 19th century Cairo continually throughout the year. These images invoked what I believe can be described as nostalgia in the modern Egyptian population, particularly Egyptian Egyptologists like myself - we loved them!

These images answered a desire to see how these historical sites looked before archaeological excavations took place. In Roberts’ paintings the sand is still covering some of the architectural features.

The first such designs that I would have seen were the black and white prints that accompanied the text of Description de l'Égypte (1809-1829) which aimed to comprehensively catalogue all known aspects of ancient and modern Egypt as well as its natural history. These were made by the savants, the scientists and scholars who accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt in 1798 to 1801. In contrast to the prints from the Description, Roberts presented especially the rich, colourful views of Egypt and its ancient monuments. After I became familiar with his work, personally, I started to imagine ancient Egypt in full colour, not black and white anymore. I was not satisfied with just the calendar, so I bought a book of his art (my first modern art book as a student).

The views of contemporary Cairo in the 19th century were of huge interest and inspired me during my undergraduate conservation courses at Cairo University, which included the conservation of oil paintings and watercolours. Roberts’s attention to detail in the representation of old houses, mosques and other medieval and post-medieval buildings was superb and it was possible for me, as I was living in Cairo at the time, to go out and try to find the exact spot where he stood to draw. I enjoyed comparing the state of preservation and condition of the architectural elements in his historical images to the current state of preservation of these buildings at the present time.

Roberts also depicted the hustle and bustle of the streets and markets in old Cairo, including the Egyptians who were present at these places. Looking at these images, I am not sure myself how Roberts viewed the contemporary Egyptian people and if this was through a colonial perspective or not. On this point, Roberts’s portrait painted by Robert Scott Lauder is a suggestive image, showing him wearing traditional contemporary Egyptian dress.

Robert Scott Lauder, David Roberts, Artist, in Arab Dress, 1840. National Galleries of Scotland

While earlier Egyptian artists might have depicted similar views to Roberts, these did not survive. The engagement of earlier Arab scholars in Ancient Egypt was not widely known until the publication of Egyptology: The Missing Millennium: Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writings by Okasha El Daly.

David Roberts produced a wealth of paintings of Cairo and Egypt in general. He was among the first independent, professional British artists to travel extensively in Egypt (between 1838 and 1839) and the first artist to be granted permission to sketch inside mosques. He brought back 272 sketches, a panorama of Cairo, and three full sketchbooks.

Having originally been interested in Roberts’s images of Egypt, I have now also become aware of his drawings and paintings of buildings and streets in Scotland and Europe. So, when I visited Elgin Cathedral I had his painting of the cathedral in mind. I plan to do the same every time I visit a site that Roberts painted, using his images as a source of information and point of comparison just as I did when visiting sites in Egypt.

Abeer Eladany is a Curatorial Assistant at University of Aberdeen responsible since 2018 for the Art Collection.