3-008-721 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Sphinx at Midnight", by Frank Dillon, in the exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1862. Engraving of a painting. 'It was a happy thought, as well as a bold one, to paint the Sphinx at midnight, in the ever- luminous grey of the starlit desert, and with only, for contrast, a few ruddy reflections from the fire which the Arab wanderers or Cairene wayfarers have lit at its side...there seems to us to be a peculiar propriety in representing this mysterious and much more ancient monument as seen under the eternal stars on one of the million nights of its solitary existence...The great Sphinx of Mr. Dillon's excellently conceived and painted picture stands not very far from the "second" pyramid, which is seen looming in our Engraving; and it is, as Pliny said, cut in the rock, with the exception of the back, which is cased with stone, where the rock was defective, and the forelegs, which are also of hewn stone...It is known to the Arabs by the name of Aboolhôl, "the father of terror".' From "Illustrated London News", 1862.