This watercolour by Edward Lear, executed on 3 January 1854, shows the banks of the Nile with a large gyassi passing a low, square and possibly ancient building amongst palm trees 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 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.

This view is constructed in a narrow horizontal format emphasising the slow flow of the river. The reflections in the water further underline the horizontal character of the composition which is accentuated by the diagonal of the large lateen sail. Its colours are restricted to yellows, ochres, oranges and greens. Lear does not specify the exact location. The scene appears to be taken from aboard another 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 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.