In the Autumn, I reviewed the excellent and very interesting exhibition Alan Sorrell ‘Nubia’ at the Beecroft Art Gallery in Southend on sea and I subsequently followed up with post about the location of Sorrell’s ‘Marea’, subject of his paintings number 45 and 46. That exhibition also inspired this post, because in addition to the rather wonderful paintings by Sorrell, it included a painting of the Colossi of Memnon by Edward Lear from 1854. This is the only painting in the exhibition that is not by Sorrell, and it is also from the 19th century, making it a chronological outlier. It is still a beautiful painting of a recognisable landscape and it reminded me of another 19th centruy painting of the Colossi, I had seen before, in the dining room of the Randolph Hotel, Oxford.

Edward Lear, 1854, At Thebes, Egypt.

The painting by Edward Lear is titled, At Thebes, Egypt, and shows the Colossi from the north, that is from a short distance behind the left shoulder of the right colossus as you stand in front of them. The Colossi sit on flat ground, with no evidence of other structures. Behind the Colossi are a group of camels, many lying down, and beyond them in background, the distant desert escarpment. Between the camels and the escarpment on the right of the painting is a low rise with ruins.

The landscape has changed so much since this painting was created that it is difficult to know if the ruins that appear on the right beyond the Colossi were present when Lear was painting. Given the position of the painter, it is possible that the ruins represent the Temple of Thutmose III and later town of Medinet Habu, although I would have thought it was further to the right (that is further north) beyond the limit of the image. Alternatively they just might be remains of the Palace of Amenhotep III at Malkata or later structures built on the mounds around its lake, the Birket Habu! It is difficult to tell from the modern landscape because the modern buildings now obscure structures beyond the Colossi.

The image may not represent the landscape as Lear saw it. It’s possible that both the camels and the ruins are due to artistic license. Artists often incorporated features that weren’t visible in the landscape to create the right mood. In 19th century paintings of Egypt Orientalist attitudes meant that both camels and ruins were popular additions, conveying a sense of the ‘Eastern’ and ‘exotic, concepts I have written about previously in the context of museums and colonialism. The inclusion of non-existent figures still happens today, my landscape-painter Grandmother would often add a few human figures to give a focus to her painting. In a more recent example there is an annoyingly egregious image of the Giza pyramids, where a much enlarged version of the Great Sphinx has been relocated (by AI, I assume) to the far side of Menkaure’s pyramid (image above right). The advent of generative AI, their training including many orientalist examples, presents a new source of poor quality orientalism, recycling the worst orientalist tropes in far inferior quality.

Arthur Gilbert ‘The Plain at Thebes, Night in Egypt, Overflowing of the Nile 1878’

When I saw the Edward Lear painting in the exhibition, it immediately reminded me of another painting of the Colossi I had seen once in the main dining room of the Randolph Hotel, Oxford. The Hotel dining room was previously extensively decorated with multiple paintings of a great variety of subjects, and high on a wall was an unmistakeable image of the Colossi of Memnon during the Nile flood. I took a quick picture with my mobile phone (image left).

At the time I first saw it, I had no idea of the painter or name of the painting, but some internet research rapidly revealed it was painted by Arthur Gilbert and that it was sold on 6th April 2022 in Oxford by Mallam’s auctioneers. The Randolph Hotel was purchased Graduate Hotel’s (now owned by Hilton) in 2019, and the dining room now looks very different. It appears the art that originally decorated the dining room walls was sold shortly after the pandemic.

Gilbert’s painting caught my attention because the Colossi were so distinctive, but then I became interested as it showed the Nile flood, which, of course, no longer occurs. Today, in the absence of the flood, the floodplain around the Colossi is far more built-up. Archaeologial research has also revealed the previously buried Temple of Millions of Years (or Mortuary Temple as they are often known) of Amenhotep III, and the broken and fallen statues and columns have been re-erected and stabilised (image right). In the process much has been revealed about the design, layout, ritual and religious aspects of this once great temple, and various theories have been presented about whether and how far the temple was expected to flood during the inundation. This painting offers an interesting piece of evidence. While the two Colossi, at the front of the temple, are standing in water, shortly behind them, the land rises up, roughly where the mounded debris of the temple remains would begin. That the relatively low rise of the temple debris lifted the ground-surface above the inundation, suggests that this piece of land was already rather higher than the lower parts of the floodplain, perhaps lending some support to those who argue that only the front of the temple was intended to flood, or that flooding only occurred in very high inundations. This is, of course, one painting of a single inundation, which was not intended to be an accurate record of Nile heights. Either way it is fascinating to see how these structures appeared during the inundation. Like the images in the Alan Sorrell ‘Nubia’ exhibition, this painting represents an echo of a vanished past.