Provenance: Collection of Lord Francis Egerton (1st Earl of Ellesmere).
Dowager Countess of Ellesmere, by 1857.
Christie, Manson and Woods, "Catalogue of the Celebrated Drawings of the Holy Land, by David Roberts, R.A. (...) From the Collection of the late Rt. Hon. Francis, 1st Earl of Ellesmere (...)", April 2, 1870, lot 3 (as "Greek Church of the Holy Sepulchre: Palm Sunday, 1839").
Acquired from the above by Agnew's.
Collection of Sir Thomas Brassey (cr. Lord Brassey 1886, and 1st Earl Brassey 1911).
By descent to his son, 2nd Earl Brassey.
Christie, Manson and Woods, sale of November 28, 1919, lot 39.
Acquired from the above by Boydell Galleries, Liverpool.
Christie, Manson and Woods, sale of March 7, 1924, lot 99.
Acquired from the above by Boydell Galleries, Liverpool.
Kunsthay Lempertz, Cologne, sale of June 23, 1988, lot 349.
Acquired from the above by The Fine Art Society, London.
Mathaf Gallery Ltd., London.
Purchased from the above by The Estate of Theodore and Aristea S. Halkedis, New York, New York (The Thalassic Collection, Ltd.).
EXHIBITED:
"Art Treasures Exhibition," Manchester, Section 7 (Drawings in Water-Colours), 1857, no. 762.
"Spring 1989," The Fine Art Society, London, 1989, no. 11 (as "Interior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem").
LITHOGRAPHED:
Holy Land, 1842, vol. 1, pl. 4 (as "Greek Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem").
Holy Land, 1855, vol. 1, pl. 4.
NOTE:
Roberts and his companions reached Jerusalem on March 28, 1839, by great good luck, the day that the quarantine, which had been imposed on it by a plague epidemic, had been lifted. A couple of days later they visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, containing chapels of different Christian sects, including the Greek Orthodox catholicon, which, Roberts described in his journal as "by far the richest and is one mass of gold and carving very much in the style of that of St. Catharine's of Mount Sinai but in bad taste, the style that is usually assigned to the middle ages or more properly Byzantium. In the centre," he continued, "is an elegant chandelier of polished steel and brass presented to them by the present Emperor Nicholas…. Immediately behind this is the chapel covering the site of the crucifixion" (March 30, 1839, MS Eastern Journal, National Library of Scotland, Acc. 7723 / 2). The following day he witnessed the Palm Sunday procession into the Church during which the Greek bishops "seating themselves on two gilded thrones on each side of the Chapel distributed a basketful of consecrated bread." Roberts has represented the elaborate iconostasis, on the east side of the catholicon and, to the north and south, the thrones of the Greek Orthodox patriarchs. Below the chandelier, he has also depicted the omphalos or votive vase, then thought to stand upon the spiritual and cosmological centre of the world.
The next day, Roberts and his companions left to visit Jericho, the Dead Sea and Bethlehem, returning to Jerusalem on April 8. Roberts then spent several days making sketches in the city, among them the one on which this watercolor is based (now in the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, Lancashire), but he found the ruined state of the buildings distressing: "Even the Holy Sepulchre itself comes under this head, the fire in 1810 [in fact, 1808] having destroyed everything like architecture about it and it is now replaced by the most monstrous jumble of walls, arches and domes that could be put together by people just emerging from Barbarism" (April 13, 1839, MS Eastern Journal). Roberts finally left the city on April 15 to continue his journey northwards towards Lebanon.
We are grateful to Ms. Briony Llewellyn for preparing this catalogue entry.

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Lot 52

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