Cairo, looking West

Location

Country: Egypt
City: Cairo
Place: British Embassy

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.

Places

Africa, Egypt, Middle East

Subjects

topography, townscape/cityscape, hill, desert, stone wall, mosque, pyramid, dome, minaret

Materials & Techniques

lithograph, colour lithograph

Artist

David Roberts (1796 - 1864)
Louis Haghe (1806 - 1885)

Title

Cairo, looking West

Date

published 1842-9

Medium

Colour lithograph

Dimensions

height: 33.10 cm, width: 50.50 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Agnew's, January 1982

GAC number

16013