The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 31, 2023

Study for Mehmet Ali Pasha

c. 1844

John Frederick Lewis

(British, 1805–1876)

England, 19th century

Watercolor, gouache, black chalk, and graphite

Support: Cream wove paper

Sheet: 36.2 x 24.6 cm (14 1/4 x 9 11/16 in.); Secondary Support: 44.3 x 33 cm (17 7/16 x 13 in.)

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund 1986.78

Location

not on view

Fun Fact

Lord Elphinstone, governor of Madras, described this drawing in an 1845 letter as "the best, and in fact, the only good likeness [of Mehmet Ali Pasha] I have seen, and I saw it within a quarter of an hour of leaving the original."

Description

This drawing was a study for a larger watercolor (now at the Victoria and Albert Museum) of Mehmet Ali Pasha, considered by many as the "Father of Modern Egypt." While European travel to the Middle East burgeoned during the mid 19th century, John Frederick Lewis was more intrepid than most, living and painting in Cairo for a decade. Upon his return to England in 1851, he astonished London audiences with more than 600 watercolors that conjured an exotic world of sumptuous colors and textures articulated in painstaking detail.

Provenance
1986
(sale, Bill Thomson, London, May/June 1986, no. 37)
1986
(Henry Strachey, London, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland OH)
1986-
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland OH
Citations
Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1986." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, no. 2 (1987): 38-79. Mentioned: p. 72, no. 159 www.jstor.org
Lemonedes, Heather. British Drawings: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Exh. Cat. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013. Mentioned: pp. 86-87, 146, no. 28; Reproduced: p. 87
Exhibition history

Year in Review for 1986. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 4-March 15, 1987).

The Birth and Flowering of British Romantic Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 1-July 22, 1990).

British Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art . The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 10-May 26, 2013).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1986.78