Truth in the Details

摘要

John Frederick Lewis (1804–1876) was a British painter who specialized in exquisitely detailed paintings of Oriental (Middle Eastern) subject matter, inspired by his ten-year residency in Egypt. Having become an exhibiting member of London’s Old Watercolor Society by 1827, Lewis would later turn almost exclusively to oil painting. His early works favored animals and hunting scenes, but his compositions became increasingly diverse after he had traveled to Spain and Europe. In 1841 his travels took him to Cairo, where he remained until 1851, making numerous drawings and gathering the materials that would confirm his growing reputation in London as an “artist-ethnographer.”