A Street in Cairo, Egypt

David Roberts passed through Cairo, Mount Sinai and Petra on his journey to the Holy Land in 1838-1839. The book of lithographs produced from sketches on this is still in print today. These sketches also became the inspiration for paintings like this and Pilgrims Approaching Jerusalem that hangs nearby.

Roberts believed Egypt was ‘untrodden’ territory for British artists. He saw his travels as a mission to record the country’s architecture. He did not know that he was there at the same time as William James Muller, whose work also hangs in the College collection. Napoleon’s expeditions in Egypt (1798-1801) had sparked the beginning of modern Egyptology and ‘Egyptomania’. Roberts saw his work as a foil to the famously inaccurate records of French artists.

This painting presents an ‘eye-witness’ account of the street architecture and the people of Cairo going about their business. Reviewers noted ‘the Ethiopians, Turks, and Copts, all clad in flowing costumes’. Their clothing would have been unfamiliar to Victorian viewers and brought interest to a scene of everyday life on another continent. Roberts later wrote that his visit to Cairo had been an ‘arduous undertaking’ as he had ‘mostly’ worn European clothes in the hot ‘crowded Street’.

Purchased by Thomas Holloway, 1883.