View of Muscat

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London, ca. 1829
After original sketches by James Silk Buckingham
Watercolour and ink on paper
9.5 cm high, 13.2 cm wide
Stock no.: A5501
 

A view of the port city of Muscat, Oman. A label on the reverse incorrectly identifies it as a sketch as for James Justinian Morier’s Journey through Persia and Asia Minor to Constantinople in the years 1808–1809. It is, in fact, a preliminary sketch for a woodcut to illustrate James Silk Buckingham’s 1830 book Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia. A prolific travel writer, Buckingham wrote several volumes on his journey overland to India. In this, the second volume, Buckingham picks up in Baghdad in 1828 and ends in the port of Muscat. The sketches he made during his travels were then handed over to a professional artist and illustrator, William Henry Brooke (1772–1860), to transfer onto wood before a separate engraver finished the job. This illustration of Muscat, the focus of chapter 9, seems to have been dropped in favour of an engraving from a painting by ‘[William Frederick] Witherington, after a sketch of Colonel [John] Johnson, of the Bombay Engineers’.¹ The name in pencil in the top righthand corner of the sketch, Williams, refers to the intended engraver.

Several watercolours by William Henry Brooke for the same publication are held in the British Museum, London. A sketch of the tomb of Hafez in Shiraz, Iran (no. 2014,6012.3) is labelled no. 16; a sketch of Kazerun, Iran (no. 2014,6012.2), is labelled no. 19; and a view of Aqar Quf, Iraq (no. 1957,0221.6), is labelled no. 21.
 
[1] Buckingham, James Silk. Travels in Assyria, Media, and Persia: Including a Journey from Bagdad to Mount Zagros, to Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana, Researches in Ispahan and the Ruins of Persepolis, vol. 2. London: Colburn, 1830, Chapter VIII, p. 392. Accessed online via https://archive.org/details/travelsinassyria02buckuoft on 11.12.25.