The Temple of Edfu: The Door of the Pylon (1850): Art, History and Details

The Temple of Edfu: The Door of the Pylon (1850) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is John Frederick Lewis (British, 1805–1876).

The work and its context

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

This notable recent acquisition is the work of John Frederick Lewis, who moved to Cairo in 1841 and stayed for almost a decade. He made this drawing on an expedition up the Nile that he took with his wife in 1849–50, around the same time that the first photographers arrived in Egypt. At that time,the temple complex at Edfu was buried to a depth of almost 40 feet. Lewis’s watercolor carefully renders the ruins and records the hieroglyphic inscription,but transcends archaeological description to evoke the thrill of exploration and discovery.Photographers,influenced by painters such as David Roberts and Lewis, often chose similar viewpoints and framing for their depictions.

Object facts

• Title: The Temple of Edfu: The Door of the Pylon
• Date: 1850
• Creator attribution: John Frederick Lewis (British, 1805–1876)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Watercolor (wash and point of brush work) and gouache and graphite
• Dimensions: Sheet: 35.5 x 43.3 cm (14 x 17 1/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - British
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2015.73

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum Masters: 2016-17 Companion Guide. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2016.
• Lemonedes, Heather. “Acquisitions 2015: Drawings.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 56, no. 2 (March/April 2016): 24-25.

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.