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Medium: oil on panel

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Dimensions: 35 by 51 cm.,13 3/4 by 20 in.

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Literature: James Ballantine, The Life of David Roberts, R.A., 1866, no.155 in the list of pictures

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Notes: This fascinating work includes a self portrait of David Roberts. He sits cross-legged in the foreground, dressed in Ottoman clothing and eagerly sketching. Colonel Campbell, a close friend of Roberts, sits on the divan opposite his Highness Muhammed Ali-Pasha (1769-1849) as he explains to him the idea of the overland rail route to India. Roberts made a drawing of the scene during the official audience in 1839 and worked up this finished oil ten years later, possibly as a commemoration of the life of Ali-Pasha who died in August 1849. Ali-Pasha encouraged the emergence of the modern Egyptian state, and was the founder of the dynasty that ruled Egypt until the middle of the 20th century. The Pasha's fleet is visible in the background, a detail which emphasises Egypt's burgeoning secular power. The Pasha's first minister, the influential Bogosh-Bey, stands beside him, and Colonel Campbell is accompanied by Robert Thorburn, the Consul General, and other dignitaries and visitors. The picture is both a compositional tour de force and a unique record of the English presence in Egypt at the height of the Empire.

The present picture is reproduced as a lithograph in Roberts's Egypt and Nubia, 1846-49.