The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt & Nubia (Easton Press Deluxe Limited Edition)

ROBERTS, David (lithographs Louis Haghe). The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt & Nubia. Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 2014. 3 vols.

Quarto (21.5 × 29 cm). All three volumes bound in full royal blue leather. Spines with raised bands, elaborately decorated and gilt-lettered. Elaborate gilt decoration to boards and spines. All edges gilt. Marbled endpapers. Satin ribbon page markers. Vol.I: Jerusalem & Galilee. Jordan & Bethlehem. Plates 1-87. Vol.II: Idumea & Petra. Egypt & Nubia. Plates 88-168; Vol.III: Egypt & Nubia. Plates 169-250. 250 colour lithographic plates throughout all three volumes, reproduced in full facsimile from the original 1842–49 publication. Deluxe Limited Edition. Limited to 800 numbered copies, this being number 64. Now out of print. Facsimile of the original edition: London: F. G. Moon, 1842–49; first quarto edition: London: Day & Son, 1855–56.

David Roberts (1796–1864) was born near Edinburgh, the son of a shoemaker, and came to painting through an apprenticeship to a house decorator before becoming a scene painter for theatres in Glasgow and Edinburgh. By the time he left for the Holy Land in 1838 he was the most successful theatrical scene painter in London and an established easel painter whose reputation was about to be transformed into something altogether more significant. He spent eleven months travelling through Egypt, Nubia, Sinai, the Holy Land, Syria, and Lebanon, producing approximately 272 pencil and watercolour sketches of the landscapes, monuments, ancient sites, and contemporary life of the region — a body of topographical work that remains, nearly two centuries later, among the most important visual records of the nineteenth-century Middle East.

The journey Roberts made was genuinely hazardous. He travelled up the Nile to the Second Cataract, visited Abu Simbel — cutting his name into the stonework, as travellers did — and moved through Petra, Jerusalem, Baalbek, Beirut, and Damascus before returning to London in 1839. What he had seen, and what his sketches recorded, was a world undergoing rapid transformation even as he watched: ancient sites already damaged, populations shifting, the slow dissolution of the Ottoman order already visible to an attentive observer. Many of the monuments he depicted have since been significantly altered, destroyed, or in the case of some Nubian sites, submerged beneath the waters of Lake Nasser. His record has consequently acquired a documentary importance that supplements its artistic one.

The lithographs that translate Roberts's pencil sketches into print were made by Louis Haghe (1806–1885), the Belgian-born lithographer who had settled in London and was regarded as the finest practitioner of the medium in Europe. The conversion of a sketch to a lithographic stone — the decisions about line, tone, and shading that determine what the printed image will eventually be — required artistic judgment as much as technical skill, and Haghe's interpretation of Roberts's originals produced plates of extraordinary quality: tinted with meticulous care to evoke the specific quality of light in each location, and composed with a spatial intelligence that matches Roberts's own. The original publication, issued in parts by F. G. Moon between 1842 and 1849, was one of the most ambitious and expensive plate book projects of the century, and it was received with corresponding enthusiasm. Queen Victoria subscribed to the parts. The Royal Academy awarded Roberts full membership in 1841, before the publication was even complete, in recognition of what he had already produced.

The Easton Press Deluxe Limited Edition is a full-size facsimile faithful to the original format, reproducing all 250 colour lithographic plates at their original dimensions across three quarto volumes bound in royal blue leather. The edition was announced in September 2014 and sold out from the publisher in December 2019.

Near fine. Some very mild foxing to the flyleaf of Volume I and some spots of rubbing to cover gilt. Otherwise, fine throughout.

Please note: This is a large three-volume set and is very heavy. Additional postage costs will apply. Please contact us for a shipping quote before purchase.

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Catalogue Number: HH000380