A study for this drawing was sold in these Rooms, 12 November 1991, lot 136, repr. (#8,500)

Lewis settled in Cairo in 1861, remaining there for ten years, and the material he gathered there provided the source for much of his late work. The letters 'ARA' added to his signature, for Associate of the Royal Academy, suggest a date of 1859 to 1865, when he was made a full R.A. Although he retired from the Old Watercolour Society in 1858 to turn to painting in oils, there are a considerable number of finished watercolours from after this date