3-008-556 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"A Departure from Palmyra", by Carl Haag, in the exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, 1862. 'We have rarely seen a drawing so small as that we have engraved so full of life, character, and couleur locale. We seem to be actually present amid all the bustle, excitement, shouting, and tom-tom playing of the Arab caravan as it starts on its journey in the cool night from the halting-place among the colossal columns and gigantic ruins of the great city of the desert, behind which we see the sun sinking in unclouded splendour. The camels, with their well-stocked and well- balanced panniers, gaily caparisoned and heavily betasselled, seem to share the general excitement as they toss about their very queer but very sagacious-looking heads and sniff the cooling evening air. The foremost mounted Arab with the long nargileh, giving directions to the Nubian behind and preceded by the black boy and a water-carrier, also provided with a pipe, appears to be the chief of the tribe or party. A woman, his wife, probably, and her child are mounted on another camel. Her face is masked by the bourkh or face-veil worn in the East'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.