DAVID ROBERTS 1796 - 1864 Birth place in Edinburgh
In 1988 Edinburgh played host to the Gold of the Pharaohs exhibition, although it might seem that the links between our grey northern capital and the ancient Nile Kingdom are tenous to say the least. Architecturally, the city famed for harmonising the varied styles of other cultures - from the Greek to the Gothic, the Romanesque to the Renaissance - has only one notable reference to Egyptian antiquity: a solitary, soot blackened obelisk, the Muir monument, which dominates the Old Calton burial ground by St Andrew's House. Edinburgh does, however, have one very distinguised connection with the Egypt of the Sphinx and the Pyramids. Within 30 feet of the obelisk stands a simple gravestone bearing the names of a Stockbridge shoemaker, John Roberts, and his wife, Christine, which according to the inscription was erected by their only surviving son, David Roberts, of the Royal Academy, London, who owed 'much of the happiness in his life to their personal care and solicitude'.He was brought up in a small house - Duncan's Land - beside the Water of Leith, which still stands today. It was this same David Roberts - a straight talking ex-housepainter - who 150 years ago (in1838) undertook a journey which was to give the public of Victorian Britain its first astonished view of the glories of Ancient Egypt and Syria.
Roberts's life was a rags to riches legend in his own lifetime.Of the five children born to John and Christine Roberts in a cramped room behind the India Palace workshop only two reached adulthood. He displayed his talents early,and his mother encouraged his efforts by allowing to sketch in charcoal on the white washed kitchen wall.The education he received at a local 'dame school' was so rudimentary as to be almost useless, though he later conceded that it at least kept him from being drowned in the Water of Leith or trampled by horses!
At the age of 12 Roberts was apprenticed to an Edinburgh decorator, Gavin Beugo. The work was demanding, lasting up to 15 hours a day in the summer months, but the training was to prove invaluable. The prosperous middle classes in the fashionable New Town were developing a taste for the more refined aspects of interior decoration and Roberts, who soon mastered the techniques of marbling wood graining and ' trompe d'oeil' pannelling, cultivated the knack of covering large areas quickly. After serving his time with Beugo, Roberts was offered a contract as a scene painter with a travelling circus.This job was to change his life.
He spent the next 15 years designing sets for theatres throughout Britain, often with an associate, Clarkson Stanfield. Conditions, at first, were sometimes difficult with sets having to be painted 'in situ' overnight in time for rehearsals and performance the following day, when the scene painters were occasionally required to double as actors. By the mid 1820s, however, the combined talents of Roberts and Stanfield had caught the theatregoing public's imagination, and they could virtually dictate their own terms.
Increasingly, Roberts became disenchanted with his work in the theatre. The atmosphere was characterised by petty jealousies and he was particularly upset a rival destroyed his sets for Mozart's 'Il Seraglio'. At the same time his marriage was disintegrating and he had to arrange for his homesick wife, who had succumbed to alcoholism, to be sent back to Scotland. Roberts had found fame and prosperity, but the dream was not without its flaws.
By 1830 Roberts, determined to pursue a career as a landscape and architectural artist, had abandoned the theatre. He had already earned a reasonable reputation as an easel painter. Turner, indeed, had called him ' the man we must have our eyes upon' and he began to plan the series of journeys which were to establish him as one of the most accomplished topographical artists of the century.
The success of his 'Picturesque sketches in Spain', published as lithographs in 1837, convinced Roberts that there was a growing demand for visual images of exotic places. So it was that he decided to travel in an area of the world which, to Victorians, was the most evocative of all; the great Biblical epic of the Exodus was to be his starting point.
Roberts had previously shown some knowledge of Ancient Egyptian architecture in his only historic picture, 'The Israelites leaving Egypt'. He was not, in fact,entering unchartered territory - another Scot, Bruce of Kinnaird, had sailed up the Nile a century earlier. And yet his contribution was to be without parallel: where his predecessors had been concerned, above all, with the appearance of the architectural remains, Roberts was to become fascinated by their dramatic impact against the desert setting, and the relationship of the contemporary native people to their heritage. His was to be a strikingly modern picture of an ancient land - especially in Cairo where, wearing Arab dress, he was to sketch the mosques, bazaars, and bustling street life.
Ancient Egypt was certainly not 'discovered' by Roberts. The French Egyptologist, Champollion, had deciphered the hieroglyphics and unlocked the language years before. Even in remote Aberdeenshire, the 18th Century Cairness house had a stylish 'Egyptian Revival' interior, inspired by the fanciful engravings of Piranesi . What Roberts achieved, however, was pioneering in its own way; he portrayed a real living country with a majestic past, rather than a mere spooky curiousity lost in the sands of time.He sketched nearly every antiquarian site, including many temples which have since been destroyed. The floating, dream-like quality of the temple of Philae - ' a paradise in the midst of desolation' - seems to have cast a particularly strong spell over him. Returning safely to Cairo, he was permitted by the Pasha to draw the interiors of the mosques, on condition that he adopted Arab dress, shaved off his whiskers, and abandoned his hog's hair paint brushes.
David Roberts described his Eastern adventures in his journal, and wrote a lively account of his Nile trip, which began with the submerging of his hired felucca in order to drown the rats and bugs. he was inspired by the magnificence of the monuments, though saddened, at times, by the poverty of the people who lived around them. Leaving Cairo with an armed Bedouin escort, Roberts made for Jerusalem via the rock carved city of Petra.Desert quicksands, maurauding bandits, local insurrections, cholera outbreaks and even the dancing girls ('the most abandoned of courtesans') failed to separate him from his sketch pad. The journey ended at the classical city of Baalbec, in Syria, where, fighting a raging fever, he drew some of his finest pictures. Roberts finally left Egypt in May 1839 and, after quarantine in Malta, arrived back in England in July. He had been away for eleven months, during which time he had gathered more than enough material to provide a rich source of inspiration and income for many years to come. His oil paintings and engravings of Spanish views had been hugely successful, but their popularity was surpassed by the lithographs based on his sketches of the East, published between 1842 and 1849. A publisher was found, and one of the leading lithographers of the day, Louis Haghe engaged. The results were sensational, and are still recognised as a landmark in the of colour printing. More than £20,000 was subscribed for the first edition alone.These were highly fashionable, bringing accurate reproductions of the Bible lands into every Victorian drawing room. Roberts's success as an artist was now assured and he numbered the Queen and the Prince Consort among his many patrons.The acclaim for the work - unquestionably his masterpiece - established his reputation as a great topographical artist.He was painted in Byronic splendour by Robert Scott Lauder as a romantic hero, and invited to join the committee for the Great Exhibition by Prince Albert. Roberts accepted this adulation!
In the autum of 1839, Roberts moved to 7 Fitzroy Street (demolished in 1965) where he built a painting studio. This was to remain his home until his death. He continued to travel at home and abroad until the penultimate year of his life . His prolific output included many favourite views such as the chapel and castle at Roslin, and abbeys, churches and cathedrals throughout the country. He kept himself involved in Scottish affairs, regularly corresponding with, and visiting, old friends in Scotland such as David Octavious Hill, David Ramsay Hay, Henry Cockburn, and John Watson Gordon. In 1834, he had entered the competition to design Edinburgh's memorial to Sir Walter Scott and, though bitterly disappointed not to win, he magnanimously went on to design the stained glass windows for the first floor. Four years later, in 1848, he enhanced William Henry Playfair's perspective drawing for a competition to build Donaldson's Hospital for the Deaf. The successful architect later commissioned Roberts to produce an oil painting of the finished building. Although based in London, and a close friend of many of the great men of the day -Dickens,Thackeray, and Landseer among them - Roberts continued to take an interest in his native city. An ardent conservationist, he campaigned to save John Knox's house from demolition and Roslin Chapel from desecration. In the 1850s he visited Italy for the first time, and, while standing on the terrace of the Convent of St Onofrio on the Janiculum Hill above Rome, he was captivated by the extraordinary effect the setting sun lighting the tops of the buildings, leaving the rest in deepest gloom. This effect he translated into canvas in the great painting 'View of Rome from the Convent of St Onofrio, Mount Janiculum', which he presented to the Royal Scottish Academy as part of their collection for a new National Gallery of Scotland.
Towards the end of his life Roberts began a new project (possibly suggested by Turner) - a series of views of the Thames before the new embankment was built. He was occupied in finishing one of these, 'St Paul's from Ludgate Hill' at the time of his death. On 25 November 1864, he collapsed in Berners Street and died later that day. His overwhelming professional success had quite certainly been in great part due to his personal popularity. His unaffected charm, good companionship, generosity and energetic hospitality all contributed to attract the luminaries of the day to his dining table. His rich social life also revolved around the Garrick club and his daughter Christine's large family. For thirty years Roberts rarely failed to exhibit at the Royal Academy, and he fully deserved his glowing obituary in the Illustrated London News of 10th December 1864, which described him as a 'self-made artist who had progressed from poor journeyman house painter to a Royal Academician with a European reputation'. To modern eyes, the Egypt which David Roberts gives us a tantalising glimpse of a land of sand-logged temples, resplendent in the primary reds, greens and blues which had originally adorned them. Today the temples have been uncovered and restored, though sadly, in age of industrial pollution, little of their polychrome decoration survives. Ironically, it is in Egypt that the Stockbridge shoemaker's son is best remembered: his works are still being printed by the thousand - as tourist postcards!
In 1996 there was a bicentenary display at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh: 'The focus of this biographical display is the flamboyant oil painting of Roberts in Arab dress by his friend Robert Scott Lauder which was commissioned by David Ramsay Hay in 1840. This painting, executed after Robert's return from the Middle East in 1840, transforms the rather homely looking artist into a Byronic, heroic figure. Also included in the display are paintings, watercolours, photographs, medals and memorabilia - some of which have never been seen before. In this way 'Painter Davie', now recognised as one of Scotland's finest artists, receives a fitting commemoration in the city where he was born 200 years ago.'
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