Eunice and Ron Shanahan have shared with readers of the Victorian Web this material from their website, Letters from the Past. Click on thumbnails for larher images.

From F. Bohrer: Sortain had been introduced to Birch by the artist Francis Arundale. Then a resident of Brighton, Arundale had studied for seven years with A C Pugin, and gained his expertise in things oriental through a nine-year sojourn in the Orient that included experience on the Hay Expedition to Egypt, with Bonomi, in 1831-82, and continued with Bonomi and Frederick Catherwood to Palestine in 1833. In 1837 Francis Arundale published his illustrations of Jerusalem and Mt Sinai (London Colburn 1837), and worked with Bonomi (and Birch) providing illlustrations for The Gallery of Antiquities Selected from the British Museum with Descriptions by Samuel Birch. Only the first part of this work ever appeared, that concerning Egyptian art, in 1842.

Arundale exhibited regularly at the RA from 1830 to 1852, mostly landscapes and landmarks of Italy, Greece, Egypt and Palestine. There are drawings by him in the Victoria and Albert's Searight Collection and the British Museum's Dept of Drawings." — p. 279.

From The Dictionary of National Biography: Francis Arundale was born in London on 9 August 1807. He was a pupil of Augustus Pugin; he accompanied his master to Normandy, and helped him with his Architectural Antiquities of Normandy. He stayed with Pugin for seven years. In 1831 he went to Egypt, and in 1833 with Mr. Catherwood and Mr. Bonomi to Palestine. He was nine years in the East, and then travelled in Greece, Sicily, Italy, and France. He spent several winters in Rome. He never actually practised as an architect, but he painted some large pictures from his oriental studies, and published a number of books, amongst which may be mentioned the Edifices of Palladio in folio, 1832; Illustrations of Jerusalem and Mount Sinai, 4to, 1837; and, in conjunction with Mr. Bonomi, Selections from the Gallery of Antiquities in the British Museum, 4to, 1842.

Arundale married a daughter of Mr. Pickersgill, R.A., and had six children. He died at Brighton on 9 September 1853.

Sources

Bohrer, F; New Antiquity. PhD Thesis, University of Chicago 1989, p.279.

Arundale, Francis. Illustrations of Jerusalem and Mount Sinai 1837

Searight, Sarah. The British in the Middle East. London, Elton Press, 1979.

Sir Lesley Stephen & Sir Sidney Lee (eds.), Dictionary of National Biography: from the earliest times to 1900 London, Oxford University Press, 1949.


Last modified 27 May 2010