Entrance to Petra 1839

  • About the work
    Location
    Country: Jordan
    City: Amman
    Place: British Embassy
  • About the artist
    David Roberts, son of a shoemaker from Stockbridge, Edinburgh, began his career at the age of ten as an apprentice to a house painter. On completing his apprenticeship he was employed on the decoration of Scone Palace in Perthshire. He later became a scene painter for James Bannister, who ran a circus in Edinburgh, and at the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, before moving to London in 1822, where he turned to easel painting. Roberts exhibited at the British Institution, Society of British Artists and Royal Academy. He is best-known for topographical paintings and illustrations resulting from trips to Spain and the Middle East. He died aged 68 at his home in Fitzroy Street, near Tottenham Court Road, London, and is buried at Norwood Cemetery.
    Louis Haghe was born in Belgium, the son of an architect. He trained under the Chevalier de la Barrière, later becoming his lithographic assistant. In c.1823, Haghe travelled to London, where his lithographs were printed by William Day, with whom he enjoyed a long, successful collaboration. By the 1820s, he had taken up watercolour painting. He later produced tinted lithographs, including 250 for Roberts’s ‘The Holy Land...’ (1842-49). From the 1850s he focused on watercolours. He was President of the New Society of Painters in Watercolours (1873-84) and a Knight of the Order of Leopold I. He was also a member of the Academies of Belgium (1847) and Antwerp, and the New Society of Painters in Watercolours. He died in Surrey at the age of 78.
  • Explore
    Materials & Techniques
    lithograph
  • Details
    Title
    Entrance to Petra 1839
    Date
    1 October 1842
    Medium
    Lithograph
    Acquisition
    Purchased from Connoisseur Gallery, February 1985
    Inscription
    inside image: [left] L Haghe Lith [right] entrance to Petra March [unclear text] 1839 David Roberts
    GAC number
    16331