TEFAF opens this week and we look forward to seeing lots of you on our stand (370) in the Old Master section over the coming days. We are excited to be unveiling an important drawing by the great Orientalist painter John Frederick Lewis (1804-1876). The striking study depicts the Temple of Edfu in Egypt. The ancient ruins at Edfu are situated between Luxor and Aswan, on the west bank of the Nile. It is one of the best preserved temples in Egypt. The temple, dedicated to the falcon god Horus, was built in the Ptolemaic period between 237 and 57 B.C. By the time Lewis visited the site, the temple complex had been buried to a depth of 12 metres and it was only in 1860 that Auguste Mariette, the French Egyptologist, began to excavate the site. In the present study Lewis has drawn a careful rendering of the door through the Pylon and the screen of columns of the court of the temple beyond. Edfu is remarkable for the number and importance of its hieroglyphic inscriptions and Lewis has carefully recorded them in wash. But the present sheet is far from just being an archaeological or strictly topographical rendering of the temple complex. Lewis, has captured the monumental quality of the ancient buildings and the intense and atmospheric fall of light, rendering the view with the kind of scrutiny he usually reserved for the people he encountered in Egypt. The striking composition, vibrant in the energy of the dynamics of its design, demonstrates Lewis’s mastery as a draughtsman in watercolour.

Venue:

Maastricht Exhibition &
Congress Centre (MECC)
Forum 100
6229 GV Maastricht, Netherlands

Opening hours:

13 - 22 March 2015
Daily 11am - 7pm
Sunday 22 March 11am - 6pm

Stand: 370