Collecting the footnotes
Palestine and Egypt under the Ottomans, Hisham Khatib, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2003. pp272
Paintings, books, photographs, maps, manuscripts: each is included in separate sections in what is, in effect, an abbreviated -- if heavily illustrated -- catalogue of the collection of printed and painted materials relating to Egypt and the Holy Land amassed over three decades by Hisham Khatib.
"I started my collection in the 1970s with paintings," writes Khatib in the introduction, "mainly watercolours of the Victorian period. Because Holy Land paintings are somewhat scarce and expensive, I compensated by also acquiring nineteenth-century paintings and prints of Egypt. But gradually... I became interested in collecting books, particularly what are called 'valuable plate books', and also travel books. Then I ventured into photography, atlases (and some maps), travel guides and other printed works. As a result my collection consists mainly of objects on paper that are related to Jerusalem, the Holy Land and related regions, mostly Egypt."
The result, certainly from the evidence presented in this volume, is a remarkably eclectic collection covering a vast amount of terrain and, it must be said, of uneven quality, certainly in so far as the paintings are concerned. True, Khatib has had a reasonable amount of luck -- in 30 years of collecting some bargains are bound to pass your way -- and there is a particularly striking oil painting of Mount Sinai by Edward Lear which, the caption notes, was "unrecognized by the London auction house that sold it in 1983".
Khatib's interests, in any case, are almost exclusively topographical; he makes no bones about this, which makes the occasional essaying of aesthetic and art historical judgements no more than a faintly irritating footnote, though it is a trifle unsettling to come across John Frederick Lewis, for example, described as "probably the most important British painter to have painted in Egypt".
That the present volume is basically a vehicle for the images that form Khatib's collection leads to other anomalies: the texts -- particularly the first four short chapters (on Palestine during the Ottoman period, the development of Jerusalem, travel writing and a brief sketch of painters who worked in the Holy Land and Egypt) -- beg rather more questions than they answer.
On the American Edward Robinson, who arrived in Palestine in 1838, Khatib notes: "Robinson is considered the most important of all contemporary explorers of Palestine and his Biblical Researches in Palestine, first published in 1841, is a major scientific record of the region. However, his principal aim was to describe the country with reference to the Bible and most of what he wrote were interpretations or illustrations of biblical passages."
There is a great deal of this sort of thing. The information is sufficient to whet the appetite: all too often, though, the reader is left wanting just a little bit more, both in terms of fact, and justification of the sometimes sweeping judgements made.
Palestine and Egypt under the Ottomans falls somewhat thuddingly between two stools: it is, after all, a catalogue, however handsomely produced, and the texts included are no more than catalogue essays, a brief sketch of the historical background deemed necessary to contextualise the illustrations. Yet the unevenness of detail is apt to leave the reader feeling short-changed. In an abbreviated dash through the work of 19th century photographers in the region space is found to describe the technique of colouring developed by the Swiss company Fussli and Co. in 1887 ("collotype photolithography with a solution of asphaltum of ether involving as many as 16 printings of different colours") while other, less arcane matters, are skipped. The rather more important, if theoretical question, to what extent did photography in the 19th century depict the real Palestine, is posed simply to be dismissed in a cursory paragraph.
Similarly, the biographical notes on the artists whose work is included in the collection, which comprise a significant proportion of the book, sometimes presume too much erudition on the part of the reader while at other times failing to provide the information necessary for an informed reading of the images. Thus, on Mrs Selina Bracebridge (the collection contains an album of 13 of Mrs Bracebridges's drawings of Jerusalem, dating from 1833) we are told very little beyond that she was Samuel Prout's favourite pupil. All well and good, just as long as you know who Samuel Prout is. Yet in the much lengthier entry for David Roberts at no point is it noted that the one time theatrical scene-painter consistently distorted both architectural and topographical details in order to heighten dramatic effects.
Who, then, do the publishers assume is the potential audience for Palestine and Egypt under the Ottomans? It is an undeniably handsome production, and will no doubt be acquired by those with sufficient room on their coffee tables. And a great many of the illustrations are indeed intriguing. Perhaps it is best to approach the book as a primer, a useful introduction to further reading, and as an occasional reference to the more obscure Victorian watercolourists.
That said, the tweaking of interest does provide a departure point for further study, and some fascinating characters do emerge, not least Mendel John Diness, "a Russian Jew who came to Jerusalem in 1846 and was baptised by the British consul, James Finn, in 1849".
Mrs Finn apparently gave Diness her little used camera and soon, Khatib tells us, "the pupil was taking better photographs than the teacher." For nine years Diness worked as a photographer before, in 1859, emigrating to the United States. He was the victim of an early case of photographic piracy: "The Italian architect Ermete Pierotti published an album on Jerusalem architecture in 1864... illustrated with lithographs made from photographs credited to the author, but eventually Pierotti had to acknowledge that the photographs had been taken by Diness."
Diness's photographs and negatives disappeared for more than a century, only to reappear in 1989 during a garage sale in the United States. It is in such footnotes that the fascination of this volume resides.
