This watercolour by Edward Lear, executed on 14 January 1854, shows the barren banks of the Nile with two gyassis sailing slowly across the calm water of the stream. The time of day could be dawn as indicated by the subdued palette and the note ‘sun rise’ in the sky on the right.

By the time of his second visit to Egypt, Lear had developed his individual style, which, despite its sense of detailed observation, mostly emphasises sensitive colouring and rather swooping pencil lines. Lear tended to scribble notes onto the image clearly marking them as sketches, including descriptive comments on staffage figures or vegetation, but also on colour hues.

This view is constructed along a narrow horizontal format and its colours are restricted to greys and browns. Lear does not specify the exact location. The scene appears to be taken from aboard ship while travelling along in the middle of the stream.

Although Lear worked in the tradition of British topographical art, his drawings leave behind its documentary attitude, which recorded landscape and geographical features for the benefit of their antiquarian and natural historical associations. If, as in the case of his Egyptian images, the past is alluded to, Lear rather conveys it with a mysterious and exotic character, than attempting to re-establish the historical and particularly biblical topography which had drawn other travellers to the Near and Middle East. It is mostly the colours in their own right which are intended to trigger poetical sentiment in the beholder and characterize the scene as picturesque.

In the watercolour the vessel signifies present life and activity, but with the beginnings of modern tourism in the region the artist’s emphasis on its traditional build also conveys the romanticized impression of timelessness, equating the ‘exotic’ and ‘oriental’ present with the distant past.