{"id":10527,"date":"2011-11-25T01:49:34","date_gmt":"2011-11-25T01:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=10527"},"modified":"2011-11-25T01:51:08","modified_gmt":"2011-11-25T01:51:08","slug":"watercolour-ruins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2011\/11\/25\/watercolour-ruins\/","title":{"rendered":"Watercolour ruins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/pictures\/resource\/cph.3g04038\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/roberts1.jpg\" alt=\"roberts1.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Approach of the simoom\u2014desert of Gizeh.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The paintings are by Scottish artist David Roberts (1796\u20131864) from two collections of prints of the Middle East,\u00a0<em>The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia<\/em> (1842\u20131845) and <em>Egypt and Nubia<\/em> (1846\u20131849)<em><\/em>. These are a small sample from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/pictures\/related\/?va=exact&amp;sp=1&amp;st=gallery&amp;q=Roberts%2C+David%2C+1796-1864&amp;fi=author&amp;sg=true&amp;op=EQUAL\" target=\"_blank\">many more<\/a> at the Library of Congress Prints &amp; Photographs archive, and as representations of places that most of the original viewers would never otherwise see they hold up very well beside photos of the same locations. (See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2011\/02\/25\/pascal-sebah\/\">this earlier post<\/a> for photos of Thebes and Kom Ombo a few decades later.) I always enjoy old book illustrations of the Baalbec temple entrance for the way artists seldom resist doing the Piranesi trick of exaggerating its scale, the better to make its perilous keystone seem all the more precariously poised. The doorway is <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:BaalbekBacchusTempleEntrance.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">taller today<\/a> (having been excavated) but less of a threat.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/pictures\/resource\/cph.3g03499\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/roberts6.jpg\" alt=\"roberts6.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Baalbec, May 7th, 1839.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/pictures\/resource\/cph.3g04014\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/roberts2.jpg\" alt=\"roberts2.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Statues of Memnon at Thebes, during the inundation.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/pictures\/resource\/cph.3g03985\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/roberts3.jpg\" alt=\"roberts3.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Thebes, Decr 4th, 1838.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/pictures\/resource\/cph.3g03953\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/roberts4.jpg\" alt=\"roberts4.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Kom Ombo, Nov 16th, 1838.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/pictures\/resource\/ppmsca.08339\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/roberts5.jpg\" alt=\"roberts5.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Petra, March 7th, 1839.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Previously on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2011\/02\/25\/pascal-sebah\/\">Pascal S\u00e9bah<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Approach of the simoom\u2014desert of Gizeh. The paintings are by Scottish artist David Roberts (1796\u20131864) from two collections of prints of the Middle East,\u00a0The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia (1842\u20131845) and Egypt and Nubia (1846\u20131849). These are a small sample from many more at the Library of Congress Prints &amp; Photographs archive, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2011\/11\/25\/watercolour-ruins\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Watercolour ruins&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,2,44],"tags":[3115,2307,139],"class_list":["post-10527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-art","category-painting","tag-david-roberts","tag-pascal-sebah","tag-piranesi"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-2JN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}