Lot Essay
William Welles Bosworth was an important architect, whose most notable commissions include the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Cambridge campus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the restoration of the Palace of Versailles and Notre-Dame de Reims. He enjoyed the patronage of the Rockefeller family throughout his career. His work for the then unbuilt Egyptian Museum placed him in Egypt in the 1920s, and more specifically in Luxor in 1925. Whilst there he became an acquaintance of Howard Carter, whom he derides in his diary for his rudeness in failing to invite him into 'his tomb' - presumably Tutankhamun's (cf., T. G. H. James, Howard Carter: The Path to Tutankhamen, New York, 2006, p. 392).