This watercolour by Edward Lear, executed on 1 January 1867 at 1:15 pm, shows four gyassis, traditional Egyptian cargo vessels, sailing towards the spectator with a stretch of land visible in the background to the right. The scene appears to be taken from aboard ship while travelling along in the middle of the stream. In the top left corner are two studies of herdsmen with animals.

During his third visit to Egypt, Lear continued to employ 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. Here, he is also precise on the time the sketch was taken, treating it like the entry in a travel journal.

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 luminous 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.