Captives of Ramses II

Newman, an expatriate who had settled permanently in Florence about 1870, carried the Ruskinian watercolor tradition well into the twentieth century. After 1887 (the year of his first visit to Egypt) Newman’s lifestyle became increasingly nomadic; although Florence continued to be his home, he also lived for extended periods in Egypt until 1915. One of his favorite Egyptian sites was Abu Simbel, where he painted this ancient fragment of figures and hieroglyphs carved in stone.