1848
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Egypt and Nubia, Volume II: Statues of Memnon at Thebes, during the Inundation is a 1848 by Louis Haghe, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This print shows two huge stone statues standing in floodwater. The water is brown and calm around their giant feet. The statues are called the Colossi of Memnon. They look ancient and weathered. Haghe used color lithography to copy Roberts’ watercolors. The ink blends smoothly into soft shadows. This made the scene feel real to Europeans who’d never left home. Look up Louis Haghe to see more of his detailed prints.
By the mid 19th century, the complexities of printing in numerous colors had been mastered, culminating in one of the high points of European printmaking. The plates drawn by Haghe, which copy the watercolors that David Roberts made in Egypt, are exquisite examples of color lithography. Egypt was a distant, mysterious country for Europeans and Haghe, a Scottish topographical and architectural artist who spent the year of 1838 traveling across this ancient land. The resulting prints—the first comprehensive series of views of the monuments, landscapes, and people of the Near East—were…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Louis Haghe (17 March 1806 – 9 March 1885) was a lithographer and watercolourist from the Netherlands and then the United Kingdom.
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