Far away from the haunts of European civilisation, John Frederick Lewis lived for an uninterrupted ten years in the Arab quarters of Cairo. His house, decorated with ancient Islamic arabesques, was an eastern sanctuary with open courtyards, fountains and palm trees. A blue-turbaned attendant guarded it from the narrow shady street beyond. In the midst of this hazy paradise Lewis sat, a languid lotus eater in his long embroidered gown. In the midst of this dream-induced life, Frederick Lewis painted many beautiful watercolours and life-drawings of the wonders of Egypt’s picturesque capital: women reclining in sun-lit Harems, geometrical latticed mosques and the exotic jewellery and bright silks of the bazaar. On a fashionable visit to Cairo in 1844, the artist’s friend William Thackeray remarked that there is a picture in every street, and at every bazaar stall. Some of these our celebrated watercolour painter Mr Lewis has produced with admirable truth and exceeding minuteness and beauty. Lewis built up an impressive collection of studies from which, after his return to London in 1851, he drew inspiration for the magnificent Royal Academy exhibits of his later years. This elegant study of a woman of Cairo, minute in detail and glowing in colour, is every bit worthy of Ruskin’s enthusiastic praise of Lewis’s refinement of drawing ... almost miraculous; and appreciable only, as the minutiae of nature itself are appreciable, by the help of the microscope. Frederick Lewis used a variety of models and rumours were that he surrounded himself with dark-eyed ‘Eastern beauties’ before he married Marian Harper in 1847. Thackeray, for example, on his arrival at Lewis’s Cairo house, was stimulated to note a mysterious lady who he spied through the lattice of an arched window. Through the diamonds of one I saw two of the most beautiful enormous, ogling, black eyes in the world, looking down upon the interesting stranger.
Sotheby's London, 20th February 1946, lot 126 R A Walker Esq
Australia and New Zealand, The Art Gallery of New South Wales and Auckland Art Gallery, Orientalism, December 1997 - June 1998, number 27, illustrated in the catalogue page 83
Major-General Michael Lewis, John Frederick Lewis, F Lewis Publishers, Leigh-on-Sea 1978, page 87, catalogue number 473