The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia is a
travelogue of 19th-century Palestine and the
magnum opus of
Scottish painter
David Roberts. It contains 250 lithographs by
Louis Haghe of Roberts's watercolor sketches. It was first published by subscription between 1842 and 1849, in two separate publications: The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea and Arabia and Egypt and Nubia.[1][2]William Brockedon and
George Croly wrote much of the text, Croly writing the historical, and Brockedon the descriptive portions.
Described as "one of the art-publishing sensations of the mid-Victorian period",[1][3] it exceeded all other earlier lithographic projects in scale,[2] and was one of the most expensive publications of the nineteenth century.[1] Haghe has been described by the
Metropolitan Museum of Art as "the best and most prolific lithographer of the time".[4]
According to Professor
Annabel Wharton, it has "proved to be the most pervasive and enduring of the nineteenth-century renderings of
the East circulated in
the West."[2]
Travels and publication
Roberts began his travel to the region in August 1838. He landed at
Alexandria, and spent the rest of 1838 in
Cairo. In February 1839 he traveled to
Palestine via
Suez,
Mount Sinai and
Petra. From
Gaza he traveled to
Jerusalem, and around the rest of the region. He returned to Britain at the end of 1839 after falling ill, having spent 11 months in the region. A total of 272 watercolour sketches were shared with the publisher F.G. Moon in 1840 who paid Roberts £3,000 for copyright to the sketches.[5]
Reaction
Famed Victorian art critic
John Ruskin wrote the work was a "true portraiture of scenes of historical and religious interest. They are faithful and laborious beyond any outlines from nature I have ever seen."[6]
Art historian
John Roland Abbey wrote in his Travel in Aquatint and Lithography, 1770-1860 that "Robert's Holy Land was one of the most important and elaborate ventures of nineteenth-century publishing, and it was the apotheosis of the tinted lithograph".[7]
The images have been widely criticized as providing an
orientalist perspective on the region.[10]Uzi Baram wrote: "From
Said's critique of Orientalism, it is clear that Roberts created picturesque landscapes that embodied
British concerns and imagery, landscapes that were translated for the Western gaze. Roberts did not simply capture the landscapes of
Palestine; similar to the other Orientalists, he fashioned an image of the
Holy Land rather than representing all that he saw."[11]
Meyers states that Roberts was "orientalizing the picturesque ideal in a
Levantine setting",[12] and Proctor writes that the images were not an accurate representation but rather a figment of the Western imagination.[13] Bendiner proposed multiple influences underlying Roberts's orientalist style, including his social conscience, opulent taste, self-confidence, sense of history, contemporary international rivalries, and the religious questions of the day.[14]
Baram, Uzi (2007). "Images of the Holy Land: The David Roberts paintings as artifacts of 1830s Palestine". Historical Archaeology. 41 (1): 106–117.
doi:
10.1007/BF03376997.
JSTOR25617429.
S2CID164696852.
Bendiner, Kenneth (1983). "David Roberts in the Near East: Social and religious themes". Art History. 6 (1): 67–81.
doi:
10.1111/j.1467-8365.1983.tb00794.x.
Chander, Manu Samriti (2011). "Framing difference: the orientalist aesthetics of David Roberts and Percy Shelley". Keats-Shelley Journal. 60: 77–94.
JSTOR41409556.
Meyers, Eric M. (1996). "The British and American Rediscovery of the Holy Land in the Early-Nineteenth Century and David Roberts". In Davies, W.D.; Meyers, E.M.; Schroth, S.W. (eds.). Jerusalem and the Holy Land Rediscovered: The Prints of David Roberts (1796 1864). San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row.
ISBN978-0-938989-15-8.
Proctor, J. Harris (1998). "David Roberts and the ideology of imperialism". The Muslim World. 38 (1): 47–66.
doi:
10.1111/j.1478-1913.1998.tb03645.x.
Schroth, Sarah W. (1996). "David Roberts in context". In Davies, W.D.; Meyers, E.M.; Schroth, S.W. (eds.). Jerusalem and the Holy Land Rediscovered: The Prints of David Roberts (1796–1864). Durham, NC: Duke University Museum of Art. pp. 39–49.