Lewis's Sketches and Drawings of the Alhambra, made during a Residence in Granada in the Years 1833-4. LEWIS, John F. MIDDLE EAST & ISLAMIC,TRAVEL & EXPLORATION

FIRST EDITION. Large folio (55 x 38 cm). Original dark red quarter morocco-grain roan over moiré cloth boards, spine lettered in gilt. Lithograph title with vignette, dedication to Duke of Wellington with list of drawings on verso, 25 tinted lithograph plates (including frontispiece). Spine repaired at head and foot, intermittent light foxing, generally a very good copy. The nineteenth-century romantic love of the Arab world and Arab art is expressed in the drawings of the Alhambra in Granada made by John Frederick Lewis in 1833 and 1834. We are also reminded of Spain's connection with British politics by Lewis's dedication of the collection to the Duke of Wellington, the hero of the Peninsular War against Napoleon. Although less precise, Lewis's work can be regarded as a precursor of the great study on the Alhambra made by Owen Jones and Jules Goury a decade later. Lewis had started his career by painting animals and had worked for the celebrated English painter Sir Thomas Lawrence. His stay in Spain had a deep effect on his art. For many years afterwards he was associated mainly with Spanish subjects. Subsequently he travelled widely in the Near East and developed a special liking for Cairo. His Egyptian experiences resulted in a number of drawings and paintings of scenes from Arab life which established his reputation, and the best critic of the time, John Ruskin, called him 'the painter of the greatest power, next to Turner, in the English school'. Lewis's drawings of the Alhambra were lithographed by himself and three other lithographers who included the landscape painter James Duffield Harding and Richard James Lane, the brother of the eminent Arabist Edward Lane. At the time that Lewis was sketching the Alhambra, modern restoration had begun to improve this important tourist attraction. (Abbey Travel, 148)