AN ENGLISH CUBIST

WILLIAM ROBERTS:

Ibrahim Pasha

Illustration © The Estate of John David Roberts. Reproduced with the permission of the William Roberts Society. Catalogue information based on the catalogue raisonné by David Cleall. For this and full details of the exhibitions cited, see the links below. Any auction prices quoted may not include all fees and taxes, such as VAT and Artist's Resale Right charges.
Images scanned from the Sedgwick copy of the 1926 Seven Pillars of Wisdom are used by courtesy of Mrs J. Sedgwick and are not to be further reproduced except by permission.

Ibrahim Pasha, 1925–6
Pen and ink, 30.5 cm x 25 cm

Tailpiece drawing for Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: 'I maintained against Feisal the greatness of Ibrahim Pasha, leader of Milli-Kurds, in North Mesopotamia. When he was to march, his women rose before dawn, and footing noiselessly overhead on the taut tent-cloth, unskewered the strips of it, while others beneath held and removed the poles till all was struck and divided into camel-loads, and loaded. Then they drove off, so that the Pasha awoke alone on his pallet in the open air where at night he had lain down in the rich inner compartment of his palace-tent. He would get up at leisure and drink coffee on his carpet: and afterwards the horses would be brought, and they would ride towards the new camping ground' (ch. 24).
PROVENANCE: Bayard L. Kilgour Jr > Houghton Library, Harvard University (1966, MS Eng 1653, no. 26)
EXHIBITION HISTORY: National Portrait Gallery 1988