Past Exhibition

David Roberts: Travels in the Holy Land

August 10 – December 22, 2013

Maribeth Collins Lobby

David Roberts (1796-1864) was a Scottish painter who traveled to the Near East in the late 1830s and produced a series of bound, hand-colored lithographs of Egypt and the Holy Land in the 1840s from sketches made during his travels. Lauded for their artistic merit as well as their scholarly contributions, these folios provided Europeans, and eventually Americans, with their first views of the exotic Orient, changing forever their vision of Egypt and the Middle East. This small exhibition features several of Roberts’ prints.

Organized by Director John Olbrantz and drawn from the extensive collection of Ken and Linda Sheppard, David Roberts: Travels in the Holy Land is intended to set the stage for Breath of Heaven, Breath of Earth: Ancient Near Eastern Art from American Collections, offering visitors a rare glimpse of the Middle East at the beginning of the nineteenth century. At the same time, the exhibition serves as a prelude to a major exhibition of David Roberts’s prints, drawings, and watercolors, that is being organized by Olbrantz and collector Ken Sheppard, for a future exhibition date.