Study for "The Pipe Bearer"
John Frederick Lewis British
Not on view
Lewis arrived in Cairo late in 1841 and stayed for nearly a decade, making hundreds of drawings and watercolors. This study of a Black Nubian servant wearing North African dress and holding a hookah was used, after the artist's return to London, to develop a figure in "The Pipe Bearer" (1856, oil on canvas, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery). The image demonstrates an interest in physiognomy, and the positions different ethnic groups occupied within upper class Egyptian households. Shown in profile, the main figure's head is compared to a lighter-skinned man behind, and costume elements carefully recorded. Lewis's nuanced approach may have been influenced by David Wilkie, an artist friend he visited in Constantinople on his way to Cairo. Studies made in Egypt demonstrate the artist's eye for revealing details later used to create compositions that shaped how Britons imagined life in a society few encountered in person.
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