Egypt and Nubia, Volume III: Approach of the Simoon-Desert at Gizeh (1849): Art, History and Details

Egypt and Nubia, Volume III: Approach of the Simoon-Desert at Gizeh (1849) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Louis Haghe (British, 1806–1885); F. G. Moon (British, 1797–1871); David Roberts (Scottish, 1796–1864).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The invention of photography was announced in 1839, but photographers did not arrive in Egypt until around 1850. Prior to that, general knowledge about the ancient sites came from writings and reproductions of the paintings and drawings of adventurous artists. Roberts, the first British artist to produce a series of Egyptian views, traveled through the Middle East in 1838–40. Back in England, he worked with Haghe to translate his drawings into color lithographs, which were published between 1842 and 1849 as an opulent series of portfolios. A stimulating mixture of documentation and romanticism that still moves today’s viewers, Roberts’s images appeared just before the availability of photographic depictions of the region and inspired the photographers who followed in his footsteps.

Object facts

• Title: Egypt and Nubia, Volume III: Approach of the Simoon-Desert at Gizeh
• Date: 1849
• Creator attribution: Louis Haghe (British, 1806–1885); F. G. Moon (British, 1797–1871); David Roberts (Scottish, 1796–1864)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: color lithograph
• Dimensions: Sheet: 43.6 x 60.4 cm (17 3/16 x 23 3/4 in.); Image: 33.1 x 48.5 cm (13 1/16 x 19 1/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 2012.263

Collection credit

Bequest of John Bonebrake

Further reading listed by the museum

• Tannenbaum, Barbara. "Pyramids & Sphinxes: Over the course of more than 150 years, images of Egypt's iconic landscape have ranged from awe-inspiring to cynical." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 56, no. 2 (March/April 2016): 8-10.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.