Bank of the Nile Opposite Cairo, Egypt

Drawn from Lockwood de Forest's travels in Egypt in 1875 and 1878, this painting evokes a still, sun-drenched afternoon on the bank of the Nile. The son of an elite New York family in the shipping industry, de Forest was one of the first American artists to travel in Egypt, following in the footsteps of fellow landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church, his great-uncle through marriage. Beginning in 1881, de Forest lived for two years in British-occupied India, founding the Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company with prosperous local merchant Muggunbhai Hutheesing, which sourced traditional woodwork from master craftspeople in India, which he imported into the United States in partnership with Louis Comfort Tiffany. The original, elaborately carved teakwood frame on this rare studio painting by de Forest speaks to the complex relationship between art, design, and the global economy at the end of the nineteenth century.