Bank of the Nile Opposite Cairo, Egypt

Maker Lockwood de Forest (American, 1850 - 1932)

Collections

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Date1879-1886

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 30 × 48 in. (76.2 × 121.9 cm.) frame: 45 3/8 × 63 3/8 in. (115.3 × 161 cm.)

Descriptionoriginal teak frame

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Purchased with funds from the Art Collectors' Council, Connie Perkins Endowment, Schweppe Art Acquisitions Fund, the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation Acquisition Fund for American Art, Ida Crotty Print and Graphic Arts Endowment, Robert R. Wark Acquisition Fund, and the Kelvin Davis Endowment.

Status

On view

Label TextDrawn from Lockwood de Forest's travels in Egypt in 1875 and 1878, this painting evokes a still, sun-drenched afternoon on the bank of the Nile. The son of an elite New York family in the shipping industry, de Forest was one of the first American artists to travel in Egypt, following in the footsteps of fellow landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church, his great-uncle through marriage. Beginning in 1881, de Forest lived for two years in British-occupied India, founding the Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company with prosperous local merchant Muggunbhai Hutheesing, which sourced traditional woodwork from master craftspeople in India, which he imported into the United States in partnership with Louis Comfort Tiffany. The original, elaborately carved teakwood frame on this rare studio painting by de Forest speaks to the complex relationship between art, design, and the global economy at the end of the nineteenth century.

Object number2021.4