Revealing Such Treasure as Surely Mortal Eyes Had Never Before Gazed Upon, frontispiece from 'The Story of Baba Abdalla' in "The Arabian Nights"

1922

Not on view

This striking watercolor shows the Oriental merchant Baba Abdalla standing beside a cloaked dervish lighting a magic fire. Rising smoke causes a mountainside to open and reveal a palatial interior filled with treasures. At left, Abdalla’s camels approach through a narrow rocky pass to carry away the treasures. The story goes on to relate how the greedy merchant could not bear to share
the riches with the dervish and ultimately lost everything. A high point in Detmold’s achievement as an illustrator, the drawing was reproduced in a 1924 luxury edition of "The Arabian Nights" and demonstrates his admiration for the fantastic images found in recent designs by Edward Burne-Jones and Aubrey Beardsley.

Artwork Details

Title: Revealing Such Treasure as Surely Mortal Eyes Had Never Before Gazed Upon, frontispiece from 'The Story of Baba Abdalla' in "The Arabian Nights"
Series/Portfolio: The Arabian Nights
Artist: Edward Julius Detmold (British, London 1883–1957 Montgomery, Wales)
Date: 1922
Medium: Watercolor
Dimensions: Image: 29 1/8 × 20 1/2 in. (74 × 52.1 cm)
Watercolor border: 32 1/4 × 23 1/4 in. (81.9 × 59.1 cm)
Classification: Drawings
Credit Line: Gift of James David Draper, from the Robert Isaacson Collection, 2014
Object Number: 2014.643.2
Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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