Oil, watercolour and body colour on paper. In February 1909, on his second and last visit to Cairo, Albert Goodwin noted in his diary â€Tried to get hold of some of the blue sky as seen behind the minarets and mosques of Sultan Hussan [sic]. How illusive that blue is, how difficult to get it and avoid the look of paint’. This watercolour is thought to date from Goodwin’s first visit to Egypt in 1876, with his second wife, Alice Desborough. It is one of a number of works that he painted of Cairo, inspired by the city’s architecture and evening light. A larger version of this work, perhaps made in the studio on his return, was exhibited in London at the Society of Painters in Water-colours in 1877, under the title â€An Arabian Night’.
