thePULSEMODERN FASCINATION FOR AN ANCIENT CIVILIZATION
By Leon Nigrosh
Have you ever been to Egypt? Neither have I. But in the 19th century, American and European armchair adventurers went nuts over the sandy place ~ even coining the phrase “Egyptomania,” which means to go nuts over the sandy place. To help satiate this obsession, several intrepid artists, painters, printmakers, and archaeologists ~ er, Egyptologists ~ trekked to this heretofore unknown land to record (or in some cases, to invent) what they saw.
More than 50 examples of these works are currently on display at the Worcester Art Museum, all drawn from the museum’s collection ~ with the exception of a rather spooky child’s sarcophagus on loan from the College of the Holy Cross. The exhibit centers on works by two men, the Englishman Howard Carter (1872-1939, an active Egyptologist sent to record historic findings, and Haverhill, MA’s own Henry Bacon (1839-1912), an artist who was truly fascinated with the region and for a number of years spent several weeks each year living there among the Bedouins, earning their respect and admiration.
What makes this show a little difficult to digest is the fact that these 19th century men brought back images of placid scenes and crumbling grandeur from centuries earlier. To understand and enjoy the show we need to put aside Egypt’s current roiling population, its political assassinations, international warfare, and general unease, and return to a time of camel riding Bedouins and sailboats on the Nile.
It was Napoleon’s incursion into Egypt in 1798 that sparked Western interest in this arid land. And to open the show there is an 1835 lithographic print by Auguste Raffet (1804-1860) depicting the “handsome, intrepid” little emperor leading his troops while riding a camel, um, sidesaddle. Around the same time, Frenchman Carle Vernet (1758-1836) produced lithographs of Arabian horses, still a highly prized breed in the West.
Howard Carter, adept at watercolors, chose to record works of archaeological and historical interest in a very precise manner. His “Queen Nefertari” from 1908 shows this lady in a most elegant manner, just as she was found during a successful archaeological dig. Henry Bacon also preferred watercolors to portray his view of the contemporary sojourners in Egypt. His 1911 “Bedouins on Pilgrimage” uses pale tones to convey the image of people making their way through the dry, sandy desert. To capture the perils of the sandstorms and resulting blurred, if not completely obscured, vision that these folks endured, he first painted and then wiped off colors in his “Caught in a Sandstorm.”
Photographer Antonio Beato (1825-1903 and brother to Felix, or Felice, who chose to set up shop in Japan instead of Egypt) made many images of Egyptian antiquities including Luxor and Karnak. After he died, they found in his studio over 1500 glass plate images that he had made of Egyptian landscapes, antiquities and contemporary life.
Best of show, however, goes to an 1865 albumen print photograph by Hippolyte Arnoux of two young sisters dressed in their traditional Circasian garb ~ standing next to a hookah.
