A Frank Encampment in the Desert of Mount Sinai. 1842—The Convent of St. Catherine in the Distance

John Frederick Lewis spent a decade in Egypt, where he created watercolor studies such as Sheik Hussein of Gebel Tor and His Son, painted in 1842–43, during the artist’s visit to the sheik’s territory near Mount Sinai. Fifteen years later, when Lewis had returned to Britain, he painted this elaborate watercolor in which the sheik plays a central role, shown as guide to the British aristocrat Frederick William Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, who commissioned the portrait of their interaction. The painting is richly detailed in its depiction of Egyptian life and landscape in the sacred area around Mount Sinai, but it also tells the viewer much about the idealized life of the well-off European traveler to Egypt. Viscount Castlereagh lounges in an elaborate tent, surrounded by English books, newspapers, and maps. Like the artist, Castlereagh adopted Eastern dress while traveling in Egypt. However, the sheik’s upright posture and commanding presence and Castlereagh’s languorousness reverse the terms of traditional paintings of encounters between East and West. It is not surprising that Castlereagh rejected the watercolor he had originally commissioned.