This watercolour-view by Edward Lear was taken in the afternoon on 3 January 1867 during the artist’s third visit to Egypt. It shows the banks of the Nile with palm trees and buildings. On the river in the foreground sail two traditional Egyptian cargo vessels, one of which seems to be a dahabeeyah.

By the time of his third visit to Egypt, Lear had established 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 ‘Abou Ajees’ and notes that the rippling waters are of a ‘very dirty ochre brown-grey’. The scene appears to be seen from aboard ship while travelling with both vessels sailing to the left.

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.