A Street Scene in Suez 1890-93. Watercolour and gouache on paper, 253/4 x173/4 inches (64.5 x 45.5 cm). Mathaf Gallery, London.
Wallis exhibited this painting at the Old Water-Colour Society in 1893 but it likely dates from three years earlier. It is one of the most brilliantly coloured examples of his Orientalist pictures. In a letter to his son Felix, dated March 14, 1893, Wallis writes: “I find pictures here to be sent to the Gall. on Tuesday Ap. 4th. I proposed sending one that by mistake went in the winter 3 (?) years ago, & is in the studio covered wth a cloth. I think the outside one. It is an Oriental street scene – butcher’s shop, etc. It has a card board mount (the part [?] next to picture.) This must be removed & a gold mount added. Will you put it out in the studio & ask Clayton (6 Red Lion Sqre) to fetch it, change the mount & deliver it at the Gally on the above date. You will have to write a label – my name & address + the title “A Street scene at Suez” + paste it on the back” (University of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng.c.7049, ff.111-2).
This painting received a very favourable review from F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum who praised its colouring, draughtsmanship, and finish:
Mr. H. Wallis, the last of whom deserves the position of honour which is assigned on the walls to his picture called A Street Scene in Suez (No. 67). It represents, with extreme brilliancy and depth of tone and colour, the exterior of the shop, or booth, of a butcher, groups of figures assembled at it, and an intensely strong effect of sunlight and shadow in vigorously contrasted masses. In these respects it is a superb piece, its potency and harmony rivaling some of the strongest efforts of oil painting, and for much surpassing the richest and best of its neighbours on these walls. The drawing is excellent and the finish noteworthy. The painting of the draperies and that of the accessories – especially the meat hanging in front of the shop, and some of the faces – is most remarkable. While the composition is artistic in a high sense of the term, we cannot say that the design, strictly speaking, involves any subject; in fact, we are unable – it may be our fault – to see what is the business that occupies the figures, and every one who has studied the colouration and tone scheme of the work recommends Mr. Wallis to bring into harmony the too light and bright bunch of endive which lies on a board on our right, and troubles the eye of the visitor. [511]
The Magazine of Art also approved of its colouration: “In Street Scene, Suez, Mr. Henry Wallis shows an elaborate piece of work, a shop-door with figures, in which the colour is treated with the vivid view-point of the missal painter” (xxx). The Times critic approvingly declared: “Not for some years has Mr. Henry Wallis produced so important a drawing as that which he calls A Street Scene in Suez (67) and which is deservedly hung in a place of honour at the end of the room…and nothing satisfies his love for glowing, almost dazzling, colours except the hues of Persian pottery or of Arab dresses seen under an Egyptian sky. He is, of course, not alone among the members of the society in his zeal for the East…Mr. Wallis spares no detail, and makes his brush compete with nature herself in adding colour to colour” (12).
Bibliography
Lessens, Ronald and Dennis T. Lanigan. Henry Wallis. From Pre-Raphaelite Painter to Collector/Connoisseur. Woodbridge: ACC Art Books, 2019, cat. 218, 179-80.
“Exhibitions.” The Magazine of Art XVI (1893): xxx-xxxi.
Stephens, Frederic George. “The Society of Painters in Water Colours.“ The Athenaeum No. 3417 (April 22, 1893): 511-13.
“Society of Painters in Water Colours,” The Times (April 17, 1893): 12.
Last modified 15 October 2022