An American Pre-Raphaelite, HR Newman trained in Manhattan before leaving behind the bitter New York winters for the warmer climes of Florence and Venice. The architecture there provided ample inspiration for the artist, whose 1877 watercolour of Giotto's Belltower was shown by a mutual friend to John Ruskin; upon seeing it, Ruskin immediately wrote to Newman to tell him that 'your drawing is a most precious record of a wonderful scene ... Go on quietly - trying always for more light precision in drawing and of expression of what is old and broken or weatherstained.'

Newman's particular gift for recording the textures and tones of ancient structures is perhaps most visible in his painstakingly, poetically painted watercolours of the 3,200-year-old Egyptian temple Abu Simbel. From 1888, the artist wintered in Egypt, where he moored his boat (or dahabiya) the Hapi on the Nile, directly across from the grand entrance of the temple, guarded by the towering figures of Ramses II. He was well known to the local Egyptians and touring ex-pats, while his pictures of the site 'had a great vogue' and sold 'at large prices to clients who were lords and other rich people', according to fellow American artist Joseph Lindon Smith. Another passing ex-pat recalled that 'When they were uncovering Abu Simbel, he [Newman] was there in his tent painting. Amidst the singing of six hundred Egyptians and the buzzing of six hundred thousand flies, he must have had a pleasant time. I think he ought to charge ten thousand for every picture.' (Arthur Wellington Hart, The Quick Traveler, 1912)

The facades of the 13th-century BC twin temples at Abu Simbel were carved from the sandstone cliffside on the western bank of Lake Nasser, facing east. Over centuries their entrances were buried by sand, blown down from the high desert above to form an enormous dune. By the 6th century BC the dune reached the Pharaoh’s knees in his high-relief image, and by the time the existence of the temples was reported in Europe in the early 19th century, the sand had buried both temples entirely. 

Newman painted and exhibited several watercolours of Abu Simbel's interior between at least 1900 and 1913. Ours, done in 1904, is a faithful and atmospheric impression of the temple's cool sandstone, deeply hewn hieroglyphs, and wall paintings, all in varying shades of ancient ochre.