Petra and the Holy Land [antikvár]

The Life and travels of David RobertsPage 1 bottom left This portrait of David Roberts appeared in the first edition of "The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Egypt and Nubia".Page 1 right The frontispiece of the third volume of "The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Egypt and Nubia", published in London between 1842 and 1846 by Francis Graham Moon, shows the superb rock façade ofKhazneh, at Petra.Page!The famous portrait of David Roberts in oriental clothes was made by Robert Scott Launder in 1840. The clothes, sword and belt were among the souvenirs collected by the artist on his long trip to Egypt and the Holy Land.The son of a humble shoemaker, David Roberts was born on 24th October 1796 in Stockbridge, near Edinburgh. His natural artistic talent appeared very early and was encouraged by his mother, who loved to tell him about the town of her birth - St. Andrews - where the remains of a famous cathedral stood. When the young David, struck by the gaily-coloured posters of a circus, filled the walls of their kitchen with rows of animals and other figures skilfully drawn in red chalk, his father also took notice of his remarkable gift; however he was sadly aware that his sorry finances made it impossible to send David to school. As a result, Roberts, now considered one of the leading vedutistas/landscapes painters of the 19th century, was brilliantly self-taught and not until the age of forty did he fully acquire the academic bases required for the career of a painter. With all probability, the only person who provided him with some of the rudiments of drawing was Gavin Beugo, a house-painter of a surly and authoritarian disposition who had been recommended to the family by the director of the Edinburgh TrusteesAcademy and to whom Roberts was apprenticed for seven years. In 1815 the young Roberts moved to Perth, where he found his first real paid job as a professional decorator; he returned to Edinburgh the following year and was employed as assistant scenographer in a second-rate travelling theatre, the "Pantheon", with which he toured all over Scotland. In 1819 he became an official painter at Glasgow's Theatre Royal and later held the same position in Edinburgh's Theatre Royal.His marriage to the Scottish actress Margaret McLachlan, celebrated in 1820, foimdered after a short and difficult conjugal experience; despite this Roberts was always a caring father, strongly attached to his only daughter Christine, born in 1821. He felt deep affection for her which she returned as an adult by reordering his work and copying out his travel journals. In the closing months of 1821 Roberts, by then quite well known, was employed by London's Drury Lane Theatre together with his friend and great rival Clarkson Stanfield, also destined to become a famous vedutista. In 1824 his first oil painting, a view of Dryburgh abbey, was exhibited at the British Institution; two years later the artist was at the prestigious Covent Garden. In the meantime his scenery for a production of Mozart's "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" had been a resounding international success.David Roberts was born in 1796 near Edinburgh and became one of the most celebrated landscape artists of the nineteenth century. In 1839, after a visit to Egypt, he travelled to Petra and the Holy Land sketching all the most important buildings and monuments as he went. The superb lithographs taken from his drawings were published for the firsttime in London between 1842 and 1849. They make up a wonderful display of his virtuosity and constitute an exciting journey in time from the mountains of Sinai to the ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon.