Note

American born Henri Newman travelled to Europe in the spring of 1870. First based in Paris, the Franco-Prussian war forced him to relocate to Italy, where he met his wife, Mary Watson Willis, and lived for the rest of his life. There, Newman slowly abandoned landscape painting to focus on architectural studies instead, some of which were inspired by the writings of English critic John Ruskin. From the mid-1880s, Newman and his started to spend their winters in Egypt, traveling from site to site on a large houseboat which soon became a familiar sight to the locals and many British tourists visiting temple ruins along the Nile, such as the one depicted in the present work, the Temple complex of Philae.

First erected on Philae Island, near the First Cataract of the Nile River, the Temple now stands on the nearby Agilkia Island due to the Aswan Low Dam in 1902, which flooded the original site. Philae is part of a complex of several temples and palaces built between 380 and 145 BC, the most ancient of which was dedicated to the goddess Isis, depicted here. While Newman focused on the entrance to the temple, and especially the open gate outside in other works, the present watercolor pays close attention to the beautiful papyriform capitals of the open temple.