Edfu at sunset

Details

Edward Lear (1812-1888)
Edfu at sunset
inscribed and dated 'Edfoo Sunset/6.30 pm./Feby. 11./1854' (lower left)
pencil and watercolour
6 x 9 in. (15.2 x 22.8 cm.)

Provenance

Anon. sale, Christie's, London, 15 November 1988, lot 44.

Literature

G. Bauer, Le Siècle d'Or de l'Aquarelle Anglaise, Anthèse, 1998, p. 145, pl. 201, illustrated in colour.
W. Hauptman, L'Âge d'Or de l'Aquarelle Anglaise 1770-1900, Lausanne, 1999, p. 176, no. 116, illustrated in colour.

Exhibited

Lausanne, Fondation de l'Hermitage, L'Âge d'Or de l'Aquarelle Anglaise 1770-1900, 22 January - 24 May 1999, no. 116.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium

Lot Essay

Lear visited Edfu on his second trip to Egypt in 1853-4. After spending ten happy days at Philae, he left Aswan on 9 February 1854 and travelled north down the Nile. He reached Silsileh on the evening of 10 February; he wrote to his sister Ann: '... on the 11th we got as far as Edfoo, where, on great mounds of dust stands an ... enormous temple, overlooking the village below & a magnificent extent ... north & south, of the Nile, & the desert hills, & the astonishing plain of green corn', having drawn the temple Komombo the same day (P. Hofer, Edward Lear as a Landscape Draughtsman, Cambridge Mass., 1967, pl. 52).

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