The present work Mountains at Thebes, West Nile Bank is a splendid rendering of the desert mountain range surrounding Deir el-Bahri, a complex of mortuary temples and tombs.  Within this tomb complex is situated the Temple of Hatshepsut, remnants of which can be seen to the far left of our painting.  The temple was little more than a ruin in 1891, has since been largely reconstructed.

Charles Edwin Wilbour (1833-1896), whose estate gave this work to the Brooklyn Museum, was a latecomer to Egyptology (though he was the first trained American Egyptologist).[1]  Born in Rhode Island, Wilbour attended the Brown University, where he was recognized for his skill with languages.  In 1854, having taught himself shorthand, he embarked on a career as a journalist, working for the New York Herald Tribune and then moving to the New York Transcript.  An omnivorous scholar, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1859, while translating several works from French to English, including Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables (1862) and Ernest Renan’s The Life of Jesus (1864).  In addition to his other occupations, Wilbour was employed by the city as a stenographer in the Bureau of Elections and the Superior Court.  Wilbour’s decision to travel to France, where he would study Egyptology under Gaston Maspero, coincided with the 1871 fall of the ring led by political kingpin “Boss” Tweed.

Beginning in 1880, Wilbour spent winters in Egypt, occupying himself with his own research, building a collection of antiquities, and from time to time helping out Maspero, his teacher and head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service.  Wilbour was highly respected by his contemporaries for his accuracy in recording inscriptions and his generosity with his knowledge, but he published just one article on his own work, an 1890 report on waterway improvements during the reign of Thutmoses III (1504-1452 B.C.).  His legacy – his collection and vast library – came to the Brooklyn Museum following a request made by his widow, Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, that their children present them to an American institution.  The library, some 2,500 volumes, including many once owned by Prussian archaeologist Karl Lepsius (1810-1884), was given in 1916.  The collection and an endowment followed in later bequests.

[1] Biographical information on Charles Wilbour taken from Mark Rose, “Wilbour’s Legacy”, Archaeology Online, August 18, 2005.

Author biography:

Georges Clairin was born in Paris on September 11, 1843.[1]  In 1861 he entered the Ecole des beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied with François Picot and Isidore Pils.  He sent the first of many contributions to the Salon in 1866, an Episode of a Conscript of 1813 (untraced).  By 1868 he had joined the painter Henri Regnault in a visit to Spain, where he was evidently impressed by Moorish architecture and influenced by Spanish Orientalist painter Mariano Fortuny y Marsal.  From Spain, Clairin and Regnault travelled to Tangier, where Clairin made a close study of local costume and constructed a house and studio in partnership with Regnault.

Clairin was one of the last successful practitioners of Orientalist painting.  The preoccupation of Clairin and his circle with lurid, vividly detailed Moorish historical themes may have been inspired by such Romantic works as Delacroix’s Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (1840: Paris, Louvre).

During the 1870’s Clairin played a significant role in the decoration of the Paris Opera.  Clairin executed other large decorative commissions for public buildings in Cherbourg, Tours and Monte Carlo.  He also painted landscapes and portraits of women from society and the theatre, in particular Sarah Bernhardt.

Clairin’s later Orientalist pieces display excessive interest in costume and décor that is probably related to his experience as a painter of theatrical subjects.  Clairin did not return to North Africa or the Near East, and his later paintings of female subjects are essentially costume studies relating more to the conventions of the Parisian stage than to the actuality of Muslim daily life.

Clairin won numerous academic awards and was given a major retrospective in Paris in 1901.  He continued to submit large Orientalist canvases to the Salon of the Société des Artistes Français until World War I.  Clairin died in Belle-lle-en-Mer, Morbihan on September 2, 1919.
[1] Biographical information taken from Donald A. Rosenthal, The Grove Dictionary of Art.