DAVID ROBERTS, R.A. (1796 -1864)
 

Entrance to Petra

1839

watercolour with lead heightened with white on light grey paper,

54 X 34 cm

inscribed: David Roberts 1839

Entrance to Petra, March 10^th 1839

P.337

Roberts was at Petra from 6-10 March 1839. On the 10^th he noted in his Journal: 'Heavy rain today, notwithstanding I have made several sketches of this extraordinary place' (see J. Ballantine, Roberts, 1866, p.123). These were later worked up into finished watercolours as the basis for a group of fourteen lithographs. In a modern booklet on the series this watercolour is engraved as Petra – The Theatre. 

Roberts became a tremendous traveller: from France in 1831, he ventured further afield to Spain and Tangier 1832-3; in 1838 he went to Egypt and the Holy Land. These journeys produced many oils and watercolours (see also P.154) and the basis for several series of engravings of which Views in the Holy Land, Syria Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia, containing about 250 plates and published in six volumes from 1842-9 at a cost of £50,000, is the most celebrated. All these activities contributed to the considerable fortune that Roberts made.   

EJ

PROVENANCE: G. Norman; P&D Colnaghi Ltd, from whom purchased by Gallery, April 1960.

EXHIBITIONS: Primitives to Picasso, London, R.A., 1962, no.404; English Watercolours from The Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford, Reading, Reading Museum & Art Gallery, 1965, no.41; British Watercolours: A Golden Age 1750 –1850, Kentucky, J.B. Speed Art Museum, 1977, no.77; On the banks of the Jordan: British 19^th Century Painters, 1986-7, Amman, Jordan National Gallery, 1986-7, no.38.

REFERENCES: S. Somerville, British Watercolours: A Golden Age, 1750-1850, 1977, p.106, repr. p.107, no.77.

Copyright © Trustees of Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford.

Extract taken from Watercolours and Drawings, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery by Evelyn Joll.

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