Lot 135: Robert Dowling (British, 1827-1886) Portrait of a Marsh Arab

Portrait of a Marsh Arab
signed and dated 'R Dowling/1876'
watercolour
54 x 38cm (21 1/4 x 14 15/16in).

Until the end of the 20th century, there was a vast marshland area in what is now Southern Iraq. It was populated by groups including the Beni Hasan, the Bedouins, and most famously, the Mi'dan (Marsh Arabs).

Wilfred Thesiger spent time in the Marshes of Iraq from 1950-1958 and described it as such:

"As I came out at dawn I saw, far away across a great sheet of water, the silhouette of the reed-beds. Nearby was beached a slim, dark, high-prowed craft: the Sheikh's war canoe, waiting to take us into the Marshes. Before the palaces of Ur were built men had stepped out from such a house and launched canoes like this to go hunting in the reeds. Woolley unearthed their dwellings and models of their boats, buried deep under the relics of Sumeria. Five thousand years of history were here, the pattern of life little changed."

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
W. Thesiger, Desert, Marsh and Mountain: The World of a Nomad, London, 1993, p.163