This watercolour by Edward Lear, executed on 26 January 1854 at 5:15 in the afternoon, shows shipping on the vast expanse of the Nile with three traditional Egyptian cargo vessels sailing into the distance.

By the time of his second visit to Egypt, Lear had developed his individual style, which, despite its sense of detailed observation, mostly emphasizes 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.

In this view Lear does specify the location as ‘near Gebel’ and notes that one of the vessel is carrying straw. The scene appears to be taken from aboard ship while travelling. The colours are intensified due to the time of day – the reflections on the water oscillate between pale lilac and orange. The barren hills in the background have also taken on a lilac shade.

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 conveys it with a mysterious and exotic character, rather 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.