Open full image Pin

View of Luxor

John Beasley Greene

1854

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Impressionism Realism Early 19th Century Cityscape

Dominant colour

View of Luxor is a 1854 by John Beasley Greene, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: John Beasley Greene
When & what style?: 1854 · Impressionism
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

This photo shows a wide view of Luxor’s ruins under a big sky. The low buildings look small against empty desert and sand-colored light. Greene took this in 1854 on his first Egypt trip. Most travelers shot famous sites. He focused on empty spaces and quiet shapes instead. His style feels like a calm cousin to later photography. See more of his work at The Cleveland Museum of Art.

The story of this work

Overview

On the first of three trips to Egypt, John Beasley Greene created some 200 photographs. His work rarely documented favorite tourist sites in a conventionally descriptive manner; rather, he concentrated on poetic landscapes and archaeologically significant monuments. In this haunting photograph of Luxor, Greene's ability to depict expansive pictorial space is clearly evident. By surrounding the low, blocklike forms of the site's architecture with large vistas of vacant desert and sky, he emphasized a feeling of isolation and abandonment.

Read the full account in the museum source.