David Roberts was 42 when he set off, in 1838, on the second of his important foreign journeys. The first, in 1832-33, was to Spain, a country then little known to his compatriots. From Gilbraltar he made a short trip to Morocco, to Tangiers and Tetuan, his first African experience. In the five years between the two journeys, Roberts earned enough from sales and oils and watercolors, and from commissions for book illustrations, to undertake this second expensive expedition. He had read as much as he could about the countries he planned to visit.
Roberts left London in August 1838. He traveled through France to Marseilles, sailed via Malta and Greece to Alexandria, which he reached on September 24th. While he was away he kept a journal, written in pencil, of which one small fragment survives; the rest was transcribed by his young daughter into two leatherbound volumes.
With the help of the British counsul at Alexandria, Roberts hired a boat, its eight-man crew, a reis, and a servant. He went to Cairo and spent a day or two there, seeing the pyramids and the Sphinx, then went on to his river journey. Like most of the artists making the same trip, he did most of his drawing on the way downriver.
The material collected by Roberts over his travels was to serve him for many more years. The main short-term result was the six volumes of lithographs for which he is best known. The volumes were described as "the most ambitious work ever published in England with lithographed plates." They were issued to subscribers in monthly installments over a number of years.
He continued to paint until his sudden death in 1864 when he was in the middle of a popular series of London subjects, left unfinished. For a poor shoemaker's son, who left school at 12 or 13, had no formal art training at all, but learned his craft as a house painter, then as a scene painter, his was a great achievement.
David Roberts was 42 when he set off, in 1838, on the second of his important foreign journeys. The first, in 1832-33, was to Spain, a country then little known to his compatriots. From Gilbraltar he made a short trip to Morocco, to Tangiers and Tetuan, his first African experience. In the five years between the two journeys, Roberts earned enough from sales and oils and watercolors, and from commissions for book illustrations, to undertake this second expensive expedition. He had read as much as he could about the countries he planned to visit.
Roberts left London in August 1838. He traveled through France to Marseilles, sailed via Malta and Greece to Alexandria, which he reached on September 24th. While he was away he kept a journal, written in pencil, of which one small fragment survives; the rest was transcribed by his young daughter into two leatherbound volumes.
With the help of the British counsul at Alexandria, Roberts hired a boat, its eight-man crew, a reis, and a servant. He went to Cairo and spent a day or two there, seeing the pyramids and the Sphinx, then went on to his river journey. Like most of the artists making the same trip, he did most of his drawing on the way downriver.
The material collected by Roberts over his travels was to serve him for many more years. The main short-term result was the six volumes of lithographs for which he is best known. The volumes were described as "the most ambitious work ever published in England with lithographed plates." They were issued to subscribers in monthly installments over a number of years.
He continued to paint until his sudden death in 1864 when he was in the middle of a popular series of London subjects, left unfinished. For a poor shoemaker's son, who left school at 12 or 13, had no formal art training at all, but learned his craft as a house painter, then as a scene painter, his was a great achievement.
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