On the line – October 2009

Lucinda: Hi, I’m Lucinda Donnachie and I’m here with Jenny Gashke, Curator of Fine Art, who has recently written a book about Edward Lear and his Egyptian sketches, which will be published in November 2009.

Jenny, who was Lear and why was he travelling in Egypt?

Jenny: Today, Edward Lear is best remembered as the famous Victorian nonsense poet. The most famous of his poems being The Owl and the Pussy Cat, but he was also a landscape and travel artist and ornithological draughtsman. He took advantage of the increased accessibility of many parts of the world in the 19th century, as did many other Westerners, to visit the land of the pyramids.

He wrote to his sister while travelling up the mighty stream in 1854: ‘I am quite bewildered when I think how little people talk of the scenery of the Nile’. Lear visited Egypt four times, twice, in 1854 and 1867, going up the Nile by boat. And at the National Maritime Museum, which is by nature a collector of shipping and travel-related material, we have a small, yet representative number of the artist’s very particular Nile sketches, which give us an insight both into what travel was like in Egypt and what impressions the artist brought home.

Lucinda: What did Lear think of Egypt?

Jenny: Having joined a group of British travellers, who had hired a traditional Nile vessel, which was preferred by Western tourists, in Cairo, Lear reported back home in a later letter: ‘So far, it is a magnificent river, with endless villages - hundreds and hundreds on its banks, all fringed with palms, and reflected in the water.’ And later in the trip, the Nile island of Philae with its ancient temple of Isis left Lear almost speechless. He wrote: ‘It is impossible to describe the place to you, any further than by saying it is more like a real fairy island than anything else I can compare it to.’ And then in his images Lear created a vision of Egypt he called ‘poetical topography’.

Lear made hundreds and hundreds of pencil, ink and watercolour sketches which he affectionately called his ‘scraps’ - which he intended to use to inform his ambitious oil paintings after his return. These sketches give us the sense of sharing the artist’s experience even today. For example, a sense of slow movement conveys itself to us in a view Lear took on 3 January 1854. Placed midstream, the eye follows the rising shoreline of the Nile bank unfolding from left to right, and accentuated by palm trees and small whitewashed domed buildings bathed in glorious Egyptian sunlight. A fellow vessel is quietly gliding ahead.

We have to remember that today a holiday in Egypt and a cruise up the Nile do not seem unusual. Travel sections in the weekend papers and programmes on TV regularly remind us of the country’s stunning ancient monuments and extraordinary landscape, where to stay and how to get around. But tourism in Egypt is quite young. In its modern form it only took off during the 19th century. Then tourists followed in the footsteps of adventurous antiquarians, ethnographers and military personnel, not least Napoleon. The sublime pyramids and famous temples of Luxor, Karnak and Abu Simbel naturally formed part of the leisure traveller’s itinerary, but as you can see from Lear’s comments and his drawings it is also the novelty of the landscape that influenced his vision of Egypt - and subsequently ours today.

Lucinda: Clearly Lear found Egypt an inspiring place, but what was it actually like tavelling through the country?

Jenny: Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire at the time and you needed an official guide, a so-called dragoman, and a passport if you intended to go inland from the river. But the second half of the 19th century also saw the rise of the steamship, taking the traveller from various European ports to Alexandria; the railway, which would carry him further to Cairo; and of other amenities, such as hotels, popular guidebooks, photography and even the package holiday, all simplifying the journey and making it more comfortable. On the Nile itself travellers still preferred to hire a traditional vessel, which sailed and occasionally was towed up the river. But river steamboats and Thomas Cook package holidays were literally round the corner at the time of Lear’s second Nile cruise in 1867. There was already organized sightseeing and such innocent pleasures as going on a camel ride or seeing local people dance or shop in the bazaars, but for Lear it was really the beauty of taking walks along the river bank in the morning, observing wildlife and contemplating the vast empty ruins of the Pharaonic age that impressed him most. He is also known to have made the effort of learning foreign languages on his travels, but how much contact he had with the crew of his ship remains a guess. But he was certainly fascinated with Egyptian everyday life.

Lucinda: Jenny, thank you.

If you would like to know more about Lear and his drawings, Jenny’s book Edward Lear - Egyptian Sketches is available from the National Maritime Museum shop.