About David Roberts

(All illustrations in this Article are from Medina Arts' catalog
of David Roberts lithographs unless otherwise noted.)

David Roberts, born near Edinburgh in 1796, began his artistic career at age 11 as an apprentice to a painter of murals for the homes of the wealthy. By age 17 he had completed his apprenticeship and turned his skills to painting sets and backdrops for a circus troupe traveling through northern England. By 1819 Roberts had moved on to scene painting, first for the Edinburgh Pantheon and then for the Theatre Royal in Glasgow.

Upon relocating to London, Roberts continued his scene painting work, progressing to the production of elaborate sets for the Covent Garden Opera. At the same time Roberts worked to become an accepted formal landscape painter, concentrating on scenes from England, Scotland and France. As his reputation gradually increased, he acquired a number of wealthy patrons, including Lord Northwick for whom Roberts completed a monumental painting of the Departure of the Israelites in 1829. This large canvas established Roberts' reputation, though more as a painter of dramatic architecture than of landscapes or Biblical scenes.

Like most Europeans, Roberts had never actually visited the Middle East, and the scene he imagined in the Departure of the Israelites, though grand and visually compelling, bore little resemblance to the reality of Egyptian architecture, save in some of the decorative details. Roberts, like most artists, was constrained to work from descriptions and sketches brought back by returning travelers, which were often misleading, inaccurate or incomplete.

When Roberts had the opportunity to view an actual monument, however, he produced very accurate renderings in his drawings and paintings. From 1830 to 1833 he traveled through Germany and Spain, sketching picturesque scenes and famous monuments. Some of these sketches became oil paintings or watercolors for exhibition and sale, while others formed the basis for engraved plates in books of landscape and travel scenes. Roberts learned the value of sketching "on the spot", and began to lay the plans for a trip to Egypt and the Holy Land to draw the famous ruins and biblical locations to be found there. He believed, rightly as it turned out, that there would be a great market in England and Europe for images of such exotic subjects.

Throughout the summer of 1838 Roberts arranged for his travels, withdrawing his savings to pay for necessary expenses. He was not then a wealthy man, and the entire project was very much a gamble. At the end of August Roberts departed for Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile River, arriving after nearly a month at sea. Armed with letters of introduction to British diplomats and Egyptian officials, Roberts made his way to Cairo, where he hired a small boat and crew to carry him up the Nile. He was now ready to begin his work in earnest.